


When the Night Meets the Morning Sun

by madnessorgreatness



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:33:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8166965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessorgreatness/pseuds/madnessorgreatness
Summary: She has just enough time to ascertain that, no, she is not hallucinating, she is seeing exactly what she thinks she’s seeing. Who she thinks she’s seeing. And damn if being in the same room as her doesn’t make every lame daydream she’s had about this happening pale in comparison.





	1. Swear I was Born Right in the Doorway

From across the bar, she’s sure she’s hallucinating. Or maybe she needs her eyes checked. Or maybe she didn’t wake up from napping an hour ago and this is all part of an elaborate dream. Lindsey went to get drinks, so Emily has plenty of time to watch the woman at the bar, to take in her slim cut jeans and black t-shirt, the way her hair falls down her back in waves. She has just enough time to ascertain that, no, she is not hallucinating, she is seeing exactly what she thinks she’s seeing. Who she thinks she’s seeing. And damn if being in the same room as her doesn’t make every lame daydream she’s had about this happening pale in comparison. 

“Em, hello? Earth to Emily?” 

She isn’t sure how long Lindsey has been trying to get her attention, only that it could have been a few seconds or it could have been several minutes based on Lindsey’s level of annoyance. It’s hard to factor in how much of her aggravation is from trying to make her way back through a very crowded bar with two very full beers and how much of it is actually attributable to Emily’s lack of recognition that she’s being spoken to and offered one of those very full glasses. 

Lindsey opens her mouth again, trying to ask Emily whether she’s still alive in there, but before she can get the words out Emily is looking at her, making eye contact, acknowledging that she can, in fact, hear her friend trying to speak to her and speaking quickly, a question stumbling out of her mouth. 

“Do you know who that is?” 

Lindsey throws a cursory glance around the bar trying to figure out which “that” she is supposed to be looking for. 

“No?” Lindsey shrugs. 

Emily points the woman out over her left shoulder, keeping her hand low as though she’s pointing out her own collar bone, but Lindsey gets the hint and focuses her eyes over her friend’s shoulder, catching site of the woman at the bar. Emily groans as Lindsey stares, squinting her eyes as though that would help her filter out the neon lights and several tightly packed bodies obstructing her view.

“Wait, is it that girl you were obsessed with from your Econ class last year?” 

“What? No,” Emily glares at Lindsey, finally taking the beer she had been holding out since she returned from the bar a few minutes earlier. “And I was not obsessed with her.” 

“You were.”

“I wasn’t, but that is so not the point right now.” 

Lindsey takes one last look at the woman sitting by the bar, then shrugs and slides onto the stool across from Emily’s. She sips her beer, looking expectantly at Emily, waiting for some kind of an explanation that, it becomes clearer and clearer, is not forthcoming. 

“Are you going to tell me or should I just assume it doesn’t matter?” she asks, knowing from the tapping of Emily’s foot against the bottom rung of the bar stool and the way she keeps glancing over her shoulder that it does matter. 

Emily leans in closer, gesturing for Lindsey to do the same. She looks at the woman at the bar one more time, as though she is worried she may have caught on to the fact that they’re talking about her, before explaining. 

“That’s Kelley O’Hara.”

Lindsey’s blank face betrays the fact that the name means nothing to her. 

“The soccer player.” Still no response. “Jesus, where is Rose when I need her?” When she realizes all she’s going to get is a blank stare, she offers up some details. 

“Kelley O’Hara. She plays left back for the national team. She was on the team when they won the World Cup last year and when they got gold at the Olympics four years ago.” 

“And now she’s in a bar in New Jersey. Stars, they’re just like us. They drink shitty beer and-” 

“Can you please be serious about this for one minute?” Emily interrupts her joke, planting her palms on the table and leaning in again. She’s distracted from continuing by a rustle of bodies moving, people stepping to the side between the door and their table, and she hears the loud but oddly dispassionate “God, you’d think they were giving away free frat memberships in here,” before she sees the altogether too tiny to be making that much of a commotion Rose Lavelle emerge from the crowd and hop onto the stool next to Lindsey. She grabs Lindsey’s beer and takes a long sip before slamming what’s left of it down on the table and slumping down in her seat, resting her chin in her hands. 

“Sure, Rose, I don’t mind if you have some of my beer,” Lindsey mumbles, sliding the beer to the corner of the table where she hopes Rose can’t reach it. 

“It’s been a day,” Rose replied, not looking at Lindsey. “I figured you would want me to- Oh. My. God.” She sits up straighter, craning her neck for a better view as the reaches across the table to tap Emily on the wrist repeatedly as she continues speaking. “I swear I’m not losing it, do you know who is sitting at the bar right now?” 

“Kelley O’Hara,” Lindsey replies nonchalantly, and Rose’s excitement is sufficiently dampened when she realizes she isn’t the one to break the news. 

“Well why wasn’t that the first thing you said when I sat down?” Rose is speaking to Emily, but her eyes stay glued on the woman at the bar. “Don’t you own like three of her jerseys?”

“Two,” Emily corrects quickly. “And could you try to be a little less obvious. You’re going to get her attention if you keep staring and shouting.” 

“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” Lindsey asks genuinely. 

“That would be the absolute worst thing in the world.” Emily says. Lindsey tries and fails to not smile at how seriously Emily is taking the whole situation. 

“It looks like she’s alone,” Lindsey says after taking a moment to actually analyze the situation. “You should buy her a drink.”

“I should definitely not do that,” Emily says. 

“Why not?” Lindsey asks. 

“Go tell her you have like nine of her jerseys and that you doodle hearts on your notebook and imagine what it would be like to kiss her when you’re supposed to be paying attention in calculus,” Rose deadpans. 

“I told you, it’s two jerseys. And I do not do that.” 

“You do,” Lindsey teases. “I’ve seen it.”

“Tell her you want to have her babies.” 

“Or,” Lindsey puts her hand up, knowing that if she doesn’t stop Rose her hypotheticals are going to start getting pretty gross, pretty quickly. “You could play it cool. Just, tell her you noticed an attractive woman at the bar and wanted to buy her a drink.” 

Emily scoffs at the idea. “That is also never going to happen.” 

“Right,” Lindsey replies. “Because you never talk to girls you like. You’re more of the creepy, silently pining type.” 

“Whether or not I talk to girls I like, and I would like to argue in a future conversation that is not this one that I do, I am not just going to walk up to a professional soccer player who probably has girls or guys or whoever falling all over her and offer to buy her a drink. She’s probably not even gay.” 

“Like that’s what’s stopping you,” Lindsey challenges. 

“That’s exactly what’s stopping me.” 

“The last time I saw you talk to a girl you used the phrase ‘That would be awesomesauce’ when she asked if you wanted a drink,” Rose adds. 

“I am not as lame as you’re making it sound.” 

“Prove it. Just go over there and buy her a drink,” Lindsey says, her tone making it clear that this is a challenge she isn’t going to let Emily back down from. 

“And you’ll get off my back about this?”

“More or less.” 

Emily shrugs. It’s not a great offer, but it’s better than nothing. She straightens up, deriving some level of confidence from the fact that when this crashes and burns she can blame Lindsey and she can at least say that she tried. 

“Deal,” she says, and before she knows where her feet have taken her she’s squeezed into an empty space at the bar, a couple of frat guys behind her and Kelley O’Hara a mere half a foot in front of her. It doesn’t take long before Kelley is looking at her, probably wondering why anyone would choose that section of the bar when there was a solid foot of empty space on the corner or why that same someone would be looking at her and nowhere near the bartender or the drink menu. It’s as good an opportunity as any, and Emily takes it. 

“Hi,” she says, a mixture of her nerves and the noise in the bar causing it to come out more like a shout than a greeting. 

“Hi,” Kelley echoes. Her smile is inviting, but perplexed, the slight tilt of her head and the sparkle in her eye betraying her amusement at the initial approach but not discouraging her from trying again. 

“Sorry,” she starts again. “See those idiots sitting at the table over by the wall pretending they’re not staring at us?” She waits as Kelley glances over her shoulder, her eyes widening as she catches a glimpse of Rose, pretending to read a beer list with an uncharacteristic level of intensity, and Lindsey, turning her head to pretend to watch a game of darts happening alongside the bar but allowing her eyes to flick back and forth, meeting Kelley’s twice in the few brief moments she is looking that way. 

Kelley just nods. 

“Those are, apparently, my friends,” Emily says frowning, wondering if it’s too late to cut her losses and run. “And they won’t get off my back about how when I see someone I think is hot in a bar I never even attempt to talk to them, so if there is any way you would let me buy you a drink to get them completely uninterested in my life again, that would be amazing.” 

Kelley’s eyebrows shoot up in disbelief - of her method, not her intentions - and, seeing the incredulity in her face, Emily launches into another explanation, not realizing she’s rambling until it’s already too late to stop. 

“It’s just a drink, I swear. No ulterior motives. In fact, by accepting this drink I will owe you more than I could possibly express to you in words in fewer than thirty minutes. You’ve seen my friends, everything is a long story with them. It’s probably best for everyone if I just hand the bartender the money and as soon as the drink is in your hand I get as far away from here as possible, and then you could even use this as a fun story to tell your friends when they get here. Or not,” she shrugs, ending her rant lamely. 

“How could I say no to that offer?” Kelley consciously tries to smooth the amusement on her face into a genuine smile. She is, after all, kind of charmed. 

Emily lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding in, putting her hand out to try to get the attention of the bartender. She quickly realizes she’s nowhere near the top of his waiting list and turns back to Kelley. From the look on her face - expectant - and what Emily knows about talking to women in bars - not much - she thinks she’s supposed to at least attempt to strike up some sort of conversation. 

“Oh, uh, I’m Emily,” she says, holding out her hand as though they’re meeting in a conference room rather than a bar filled with college kids. Despite the misplaced formality, Kelley takes the offered hand, shaking it firmly. 

“Kelley,” she says. “And small talk wasn’t part of the deal.” 

“Oh, god, right, uh-” Emily leans farther over the bar, simultaneously waving her outstretched hand, hoping she’s not visibly blushing from embarrassment, and willing some higher being to strike her down where she stands so she doesn’t have to see the outcome of this interaction. 

“That was what we call a joke,” Kelley says gently through stifled laughter. 

“Right,” Emily replies, keeping her hand outstretched over the bar. The faster she gets the bartender’s attention, the faster this will be over. She sees him notice her, nodding slightly in her direction as if to say “I see you, and I’ll get there when I get there.” It’s not ideal, but it’s progress. 

“So, what are you drinking?” she asks, focusing her attention back on Kelley. The bar top in front of her is empty, so she knows the answer to that is technically ‘nothing’ but luckily Kelley gets the gist of what she means. 

“Beer?” Kelley says, though it’s really more of a question. “Anything good on tap here?” 

“They have this IPA that’s pretty good,” Emily says, thankful that she had an answer on hand. If she had it her way, she would order something that’s cheap and available in every bar in America, but Lindsey is more of a beer drinker, so she let’s her deal with the ordering and files away the names of the one’s she particularly likes. 

“Sounds good,” Kelley says. She doesn’t let the silence drag on. “Are you a student at the university?” 

Emily wonders whether Kelley pegged her as being barely over the legal drinking age or if it’s just a safe enough bet with the bar they’re in. 

“For a few more months,” she answers, though she has wondered whether she’ll even be around that long. “You?”

She forces herself to ask the follow up question, wondering whether she should have done a better job at toeing the line between pretending she knows nothing about Kelley and at least guessing what a stranger would know just by looking at her. She knows that Kelley has been out of college for several years. She hopes she’ll be flattered and not offended by the insinuation that she looks half a decade younger than she is. 

“No, I actually graduated a few years ago.” 

Emily nods as though she didn’t already know this. 

“I went to Stanford. I’m kind of a west coast girl.” 

She knew that, too. 

“I’m in Jersey for part of the year because I-” She stops short, the bartender, having chosen that moment to finally make his way over, preventing her from telling Emily anymore things she already knew. 

Emily orders quickly, the same thing for both of them, and they fall into a surprisingly comfortable silence as they wait for the bartender to return with their drinks. She hands him cash in return, telling him to keep the change because she believes in good tipping and because she worries that any more waiting for him to return could mean the permanent death of their conversation. Although, she reminds herself, the drinks in their hands technically mean the end of their transaction, as agreed upon, so maybe dragging it out would have been better. 

She looks to Kelley for a clue on how to proceed. They each take a sip from the glasses in their hands. Kelley takes an exaggerated moment to ponder whether she likes it or not, and Emily waits, holding her breath, for her approval. 

“Good choice,” Kelley says finally, grinning and placing her drink down on the bar. Emily is busy wondering how she can smoothly get herself out of this situation and back to her friends when Kelley speaks again. 

“What do you study?” she asks, and it’s a simple enough question, one she’s answered millions of times. 

“Management,” she replies, stopping before she launches into her normal explanation of why she chose it and how it fits into her career. Her stunted, one word answer somehow does not deter Kelley, who pursues the topic, asking about her classes and how she likes school and the typical boring small talk questions about how happy she must be that it’s nearly the weekend. The conversation flows comfortably, even with Kelley asking most of the questions and Emily trying to preview her words before she says them. She slips up once, describing her friends as her teammates when talking about the monotony of recent weekends spent studying, but Kelley either doesn’t notice or doesn’t wonder about the nature of the team. She glances at her watch and notices they’ve been talking for almost fifteen minutes, and when she looks back at Kelley her eyes are wandering the bar, stopping briefly at the table along the wall where Rose and Lindsey are still sitting. 

“Your friends just do not lose interest do they?” she asks, taking a sip of the beer that’s been neglected on the bar in front of her. 

Sure enough, when Emily looks toward the back of the bar she sees Lindsey and Rose, virtually unmoved from where they were when first pointed them out to Kelley. When she turns back, Kelley isn’t looking at her anymore. Instead, she’s making eye contact with two women by the door, mouthing something Emily doesn’t catch and holding up one finger to indicate that she’ll make her way over to them in a minute. They’re players on Kelley’s club team, and Emily knows who they are, but she tries her hardest to keep that glimmer of recognition off her face when Kelley is focused on her once again. 

“No, they don’t,” Emily answers. She nods towards Kelley’s friends. “But it looks like it’s time for me to head back over there and bask in the satisfaction of proving them wrong.” She’s only partially joking. 

“You know what’ll really get them? You gotta do one better than what they asked for. They’ll totally flip when you tell them you got my number.” 

“Yeah, but then they’ll ask to see it and I’ll have to-” she stops short in her rant as she notices Kelley starting to dig through her purse. A few moments later she pulls out a red pen. She leans over the bar, grabbing a clean napkin from the other side. As she writes her phone number in neat, looping handwriting Emily wonders what kind of a facial expression a person normally makes when accepting another person’s phone number and tries to make her face do that. 

“Thanks,” she says, inwardly cringing at how lame that probably sounds, and reaches out to take the napkin being offered to her, her fingers brushing Kelley’s as it is transferred between them. 

“Thanks for the drink,” Kelley answers. “And don’t even think about not texting me. I plan to make good on, what was it? ‘More favors than you can express in words’?”

“In less than thirty minutes,” Emily shoots back, managing to both banter and smile even though she feels like she’s falling off a cliff. She can see Kelley glancing toward her friends by the door, can tell they are watching her, wondering what she is doing still sitting at the bar talking to some girl rather than making her way over to greet them. 

“Your friends are wanting your attention,” she says, taking a step backward. 

“So are yours,” Kelley replies. She points at the napkin, clutched tightly in Emily’s hand. “Don’t forget. You owe me.” With that she turns in her seat, hops to her feet, throws her bag over her shoulder and is halfway across the bar before Emily can even think to say anything. She thinks she can hear a high pitched series of excited greetings in Kelley’s voice as she turns and walks back toward the table she had been sharing with her friends. 

She slides back onto her stool, placing the napkin with Kelley’s number face up on the table in the center of the circle made by the three of them. She looks up, making eye contact with Lindsey and then Rose. 

“What the fuck just happened?”


	2. But Things Ain't Boring

Three days after their meeting at the bar, Kelley’s number is still neatly folded and tucked into Emily’s wallet where she had put it for safekeeping. She hasn’t called it. She hasn’t even looked at it. She tells Lindsey she’s been busy with classes and practices and workouts and just hasn’t found the time. She tells herself she doesn’t want to look over eager. She tells Rose she hasn’t chickened out, that she’ll call Kelley as soon as she gets the chance. When she says it she’s not sure if it’s the truth or not, but on Monday when she gets home from a training session with the team she digs her wallet out of the bottom of her backpack, unfolds the napkin, and types the number into her phone. She hits send before she can overthink it and puts the phone to her ear.

It rings twice and then stops.

“Hello?”

She briefly considers hanging up, changing her phone number, and never listening to Rose and Lindsey’s advice again. In the end, she takes the rational course of action.

“Uh, hey, it’s Emily.” She pauses for a moment before adding, “From the bar the other night,” in the off chance that Kelley was expecting more than one call from someone named Emily.

“It’s about time,” Kelley says, chuckling under her breath. Emily isn’t sure whether to laugh along with her, so she just waits quietly for her to continue.

“I thought you were trying to skip out on your debt to me,” she says. “And I have so many amazing ideas.”

Emily forces herself to laugh and hopes Kelley can’t tell through the phone that it’s nervous laughter.

“Sorry,” she says, and she means it. They’ve been on the phone for all of thirty seconds and Kelley’s easygoing nature and humorous reproach make her sorry that it took her this long to get her courage up to call, that she ever considered not calling at all.

“So, Emily,” Kelley starts again and Emily finds herself smiling at the sound of her name in Kelley’s voice. “What have you been up to over the last 72 hours that you were too busy to call? And make it a good excuse.”

Emily launches into an explanation of an upcoming midterm exam and the time spent in the library with Lindsey preparing. She leaves out the workouts, but does detail a movie and pizza night she had with some teammates, calling them “friends” rather than teammates for the sake of keeping up the facade of soccer ignorance she began crafting in their first conversation.

“Lame excuse, but I’ll allow it,” Kelley says when Emily finishes speaking, but it’s meant in jest and the conversation continues to flow.

“How was your weekend?” Emily asks. “I mean other than working on an exhaustive list of favors I owe you and sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.” Even as she’s saying it, Emily is surprised by her own joke, unsure of where the confidence came from to say it. It pays off, though, when Kelley laughs loudly on the other end of the line.

“The phone watching was pretty time consuming,” Kelley plays into the joke. “But I managed to find some time to workout and train with some of my teammates. I play soccer.”

“Oh yeah?” Emily replies, feigning ignorance.

“Did I already tell you that?”

Emily wracked her brain. Of course she already knew Kelley was a soccer player, but she didn’t think she had mentioned it at the bar the other night.

“I don’t think you mentioned it,” she replies.

“Okay, well I play for Sky Blue FC. It’s Jersey’s professional team.”

Emily tries to imagine how someone who doesn’t play soccer would react to the news that the woman whose number they got at a bar is a professional soccer player. On the one hand, she thinks, finding out you’ve been flirting with a professional athlete must be pretty surprising for anyone. On the other hand, most Americans don’t care a whole lot about soccer, have never even heard of the NWSL and can probably name only one or two of the women on the national team.

She decides on “Wow, that’s really impressive” as a reaction, and Kelley demurs.

“It’s not as glamorous as people imagine. I just hope the league hangs on a while longer. But I’m lucky. I play for the national team, too.”

“You must be really good,” Emily replies, cringing. She has heard those same words over and over every time she tells someone she plays college soccer. They usually mean well, but it always comes across as patronizing. She doesn’t want Kelley to think she finds athletic achievement a childish aspiration when, being an athlete herself, she actually has the utmost respect for it. She wants Kelley to know that she’s in awe of her every time she sees her play, that knowing she played every minute of the olympics makes her desperate to play even one, that she finds nothing hotter than a woman who can go ninety minutes running forwards into the ground. Of course, she says none of this, trying to wipe the last thought from her brain in order to maintain some possibility of finishing this conversation.

“I hope so,” Kelley replies, and Emily takes advantage of the briefest pause to change the topic of conversation to anything that is not soccer.

“So,” she says. “What’s first on your list of payback?”

“Well,” Kelley starts, taking an exaggerated deep breath before launching into her list. “I was thinking you could come to my house and do the several weeks worth of laundry I’ve been avoiding or alphabetize the thousands of receipts I have shoved in my purse despite the fact that I know I will never need them again. And when that’s done you can rub my feet, teach my great Aunt how to use the internet, and name your firstborn child after me. Or we could just start with dinner. If you’re traditional like that.”

“Dinner sounds good,” Emily replies, trying her hardest to keep her tone nonchalant even though her stomach is doing flips. “This weekend?”

“I actually can’t this weekend,” Kelley says, regret evident in her voice. “I’m out of town this week.”

Some of what Kelley is saying is drowned out by a loud, high pitched beeping coming from Emily’s end of the call. She doesn’t say anything, letting Kelley continue speaking while she quickly glances at the screen, hoping it’s not a call she’ll need to take. It’s an unknown number, though her phone tells her it’s a Florida area code. She’s not expecting any calls from Florida, or any calls at all for that matter, so she sends the call to voicemail and tunes back in to Kelley’s explanation of why she won’t be in Jersey the next weekend.

“So basically, once the season starts up I’m there all the time, except when we’re traveling for games. Which is about half the time. So I guess I’m there about half the time and then whenever I’m not training during off season. Was that way too long an explanation?”

“Don’t worry, I tuned most of it out,” she says, not even noticing that her normal sarcastic personality has begun to creep back, replacing her nerves as the call goes on.

“Funny and cute,” Kelley laughs, and Emily is glad that their conversation occurring over the phone means that Kelley can’t see the blush that’s definitely spreading across her face at that comment.

“Hold on a second,” Kelley says, “I think I’m getting another call.” Emily hears some background noise, the sound of the phone being moved off Kelley’s ear followed by silence. A muffled thud announces that the phone is back on her ear before she speaks.

“Shit, I have to take this. It’s my coach.”

Emily stops herself from commiserating, saying she knows the feeling of getting an unexpected call from a coach in the middle of the day, not knowing what you’re going to hear when you get on the line. Instead she says, “That sounds important. I’ll let you go.”

“If you call me tomorrow I’ll know when I’m going to be in town again,” Kelley says, and Emily assumes that’s going to be the last of it. Something about Kelley makes her feel like she’s not the type to end a phone call with a formal goodbye. Still, she waits a moment before dropping the phone from her ear and disconnecting the call.

“And Emily,” Kelley says, her tone teasing. “Don’t wait three days this time.” With that the line goes dead.

Emily slides her phone into her pocket before changing her mind and taking it out again, unlocking it and navigating to the list of her recent calls. She looks quickly at the Florida number, but doesn’t give it more than a few moments of thought before tapping the entry below it in the list, her call with Kelley. From there she saves Kelley’s number to her contacts, carefully labeling it “Kelley O’Hara.” She studies it for a moment, then deletes the last name, leaving the number identified as just “Kelley.” In neither of their brief conversations had Kelley told Emily her last name.

Despite being alone in her apartment now, Emily decides to play along with her soccerless facade for a few minutes longer. She types “Kelley Sky Blue FC” into the google search bar, using the information Kelley gave her as she imagines anyone would do to find out a little more about her after a conversation like the one they just had. She is presented with Kelley’s wikipedia page, her US Soccer bio, and several articles from soccer news outlets about Kelley’s performance in the world cup, the last NWSL season, and the most recent set of friendlies she had played in with the national team.

As she is reading about Kelley’s record-setting time on the Stanford soccer team, her phone rings again. She recognizes the same number she had ignored earlier while talking to Kelley. Her curiosity now piqued, she answers it.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Emily Sonnett?” The connection isn’t great, and although the voice on the line sounds familiar, she can’t place it.

“Yes, it is. Sorry, who’s calling?”

“Emily, this is Jill Ellis from US Soccer. The national team is training in Orlando this month and I’d like to invite you to come along. I caught a few of your games last season and I’d like to see what you can do with our team.”

Her first reaction is denial. This has to be one of her friends or teammates playing a prank on her. She pictures Rose as the ringleader, discovering one day that one of their teammates has a knack for accents and concocting a plan to get back at Emily for whatever dumb prank she’d played on Rose at the last time they had been traveling with the team.

Then she starts to seriously consider, for the second time this week that she might be hallucinating. Could these two amazingly serendipitous things be happening in a span of a couple days? It seems unlikely, but is it more or less unlikely than being stuck deep in some sort of inception-like dream state that she’ll wake up from and realize some huge chunk of her life never actually happened and she’s back to square one?

Finally, she lets herself believe this actually might be happening.

Emily knows she’s a talented player and a hard worker. Over her four seasons in college she had become a leader for the team both on and off the field. Playing centerback didn’t come with the glory of scoring game winning goals or the flashy saves of goalkeeping, but she did her job and she did it well and she hoped that someone would take notice. According to her coaches she had a good chance of being drafted into the pros, but she didn’t get her hopes up. She hadn’t even let herself consider that she might have a shot at the national team.

It takes Coach Ellis asking, “Are you still there?” for Emily to realize she’s been silent for more than a few moments.

“Yeah, sorry. I- Uh- Wow. I don’t know what to say,” she finally gets out.

“I hope you’ll say you’ll join us,” Jill responds. “I apologize that this is so last minute, but we’ve had some recent roster changes which left us with some holes to fill. We’ll start training on Monday and there could be an opportunity to suit up for our next two matches dependent, of course, on your performance at camp.”

“I- Wow. Thank you so much ma’am,” she responds, the Georgia-esque pleasantry tagging onto the end of her sentence as they always do when she’s nervous, surprised, or downright terrified.

“You’ll get an email later today about about travel accommodations,” Jill explains. She goes on briefly about the structure of camp and Emily is only half listening, mumbling an occasional “uh huh” when it seems appropriate, but her thoughts are racing as it begins to sink in that this is it, the moment players wait their entire lives for, and it’s happening to her. She’s already begun mentally making a list of all the people she’s going to have to call to give the news to and everything she’ll have to get done to prepare to fly out in six days.

“Do you have any questions I can answer?” she catches Jill asking and it snaps her back into the conversation.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Just, thank you so much for this opportunity.”

“You’ve earned it. I look forward to seeing what you can do. Take care, Emily.”

With a click, the call is dropped and she’s alone in her apartment again. She flops down onto the couch and taking a deep breath and trying to organize the mass of thoughts fighting for recognition in her head. She’s going to camp. In Orlando. With the national team. With Kelley.

It’s the last one that sticks, as she realizes the implications of the groundwork she’s laid in their first two conversations and the fact that one week from this moment she’ll be on the field training with a player she pretended not to recognize.

 _‘Need to talk to you. Pizza at mine tonight?’_ she texts Lindsey and Rose, feeling a rush of excitement at the thought of sharing the news with them, but knowing they’re going to have a field day with the whole situation.

 _‘Only if it’s Hawaiian,’_ Rose responds, and Emily gets to work ordering and preparing herself for the conversation ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a bit shorter than the last one, but I did warn you I had no idea where I was going with this! I hope it wasn't too boring, but it was slightly necessary for where the story is headed. 
> 
> If you want to chat, I'm at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com (Which is also a reminder that Sonnett scored the equalizer and it was beautiful) :)


	3. We Even Talked About You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the sake of this story, some details of the players lives have been changed and the timeline has been fabricated for my convenience. The one that will probably bother you all the most is that Sonnett is a senior at Rutgers, because how else was I going to get her and Kelley in the same state in the same bar for a meet cute?

Kelley’s call with Jill is pretty run of the mill. She tweaked her ankle a week ago training at an indoor facility with some of her club teammates, and the national team coach is just checking in to see where she thinks she’ll be when she arrives at camp, whether she’ll be back at 100% or if they’ll need to make adjustments to her fitness regimen. Kelley is just about finished reassuring her that, yes, she’s healthy, and yes, she’ll be ready to play in the upcoming matches if called upon, when the front door opens. 

She’s staying at the Morgan-Carrasco household in Orlando for a week, getting some training in in the fair weather before they have to report for camp the next week with the added bonus of getting to spend some time with her best friend, so it’s no surprise when the Morgan half of the homeowner pair walks through the door, carrying three grocery bags on each arm and using her hip to slam the door shut behind her. 

Kelley offers her a wave, but stays focused on her conversation with Jill, listening to her coach’s concerns and doing her best to alleviate each one of them in turn. It takes a few more minutes, but Jill must be satisfied with her responses, telling Kelley everything sounds like it’s on the right track and they’ll reevaluate when camp starts before exchanging pleasantries and hanging up. 

Hearing the conversation end, Alex sticks her head out from the kitchen and says “I bought chocolate milk,” in place of a formal greeting. 

“Something weird happened to me the other day,” Kelley blurts out, not even bothering to acknowledge what Alex said before making good on a promise she had made herself to tell Alex about Emily if she ever called. 

“Like, at training?” 

“Like, in a bar.” 

“Oh, you mean that kind of something weird.” Alex abandons her half unpacked shopping bags in the kitchen in favor of joining Kelley on the sofa, pulling her feet up to sit cross-legged facing Kelley. 

“Maybe weird is the wrong way to describe it. It was just,” she pauses, trying to find the words to explain her interaction with Emily at the bar the other day. “Different,” she settles on, shrugging her shoulders to show Alex that she knows it’s a lame description but that doesn’t mean she can do any better. Knowing this won’t satisfy Alex’s curiosity, she launches into an abridged version of the story. 

“I was waiting for Sam and T and this girl walked over and asked me if she could buy me a drink. Her friends put her up to it, but it wasn’t creepy it was actually kind of endearing. We talked for a bit and then I gave her my number.”

Alex is silent, waiting for the outcome of the story to become clear. 

“She was shy. I wasn’t even sure she’d call,” Kelley says. 

“But she did?” Alex prompts, wanting Kelley to get to the point already. 

“Just now,” Kelley confirms. 

“And she wanted to know if you’d be fit to play in our next match?” 

“No,” Kelley rolls her eyes, knowing Alex is messing with her but clarifying anyway. “That was Jill. She called while I was on with Emily.” 

“The girl from the bar?” 

“Correct.” 

“So, are you going to see her again?” 

“I don’t know,” Kelley groans, leaning her head against the back of the couch and not looking at Alex when she says, “She’s in college.” 

Alex is silent for several moments, and when Kelley finally tips her head back up to look at her, there’s a sparkle in her eye that Kelley recognizes, one that is very familiar to her from their many years of friendship. 

“Don’t say it,” Kelley pleads, but Alex is already opening her mouth, sitting up straighter, preparing herself for the speech Kelley knows is coming. 

“I don’t even know why I’m surprised any more,” she chastises, but her tone is light and Kelley knows this is far from a completely serious scolding. “You always make me dig for the juiciest details.” 

“I hardly made you dig for that, Al,” Kelley argues. “We’ve been having this conversation for all of two minutes, and I just straight up told you.” 

“Whatever,” Alex says, brushing off her argument and leaning in toward Kelley to continue. “While I am deeply hurt you felt the need to keep that from me” - Kelley rolls her eyes - “I am going to put my feelings aside because this is about you and what you want to do.” 

“I don’t know what I want to do,” Kelley says, punctuating her words with a deep sigh. 

“Which is totally out of character for you.” 

She’s right. A few years ago Kelley would have jumped at the chance for some face time with an attractive woman, age would have had no bearing on her decision. In fact, a few years ago she would have been up socializing in that bar while she waited for her friends. She would have been the one to approach Emily or any one of a number of other people who caught her eye, not the other way around. 

“I’m getting old and boring,” she says, and she’s not surprised when Alex laughs. She was, after all, kind of kidding. 

“I know one college girl who doesn’t think so,” Alex says, raising one eyebrow suggestively. 

Kelley doesn’t comment on the fact that, actually, Alex doesn’t know her. Kelley barely knows her. She’s about to warn Alex against voicing all of the gross innuendos she knows she’s working on in her head, but she doesn’t get the chance before Alex is asking her a question. 

“She is of age right?” 

“Seriously, Al?” Kelley shakes her head, but most of her disapproval is directed at herself for not expecting this from her best friend. “I mean, I didn’t ask for ID, but she bought me a drink in a bar and she told me she’s graduating in a few months.”

“Then I don’t see the problem,” Alex shrugs and Kelley would appreciate how nonchalant Alex is being if it wasn’t interfering with Kelley actively trying to stop herself from being casual about this. “You’ve been such a mope since you-know-who, I think it’s good for you to get back out there.” 

“I have not been a mope,” Kelley says, reaching out to shove Alex gently on the shoulder. 

“Yeah, you totally have,” Alex says, shoving her right back. “Go out with her. Have some fun. Relive your college days.” 

Kelley laughs despite herself. “I don’t think that’s what people usually mean when they say ‘relive your college days.’” 

“Well if there’s an offer on the table…” Alex trails off, her silence saying everything she doesn’t need to say out loud. 

“I guess,” Kelley gives in, although if she’s being honest she’s known the whole conversation that she was going to see Emily again, but Alex doesn’t know that. Kelley is fine with letting her think she was the voice of reason, that she helped Kelley to a rational, well thought out decision, when in actuality Kelley was going to do it anyway. Because she is interested. Because she usually doesn’t think twice before getting involved. 

“Is she hot?” Alex asks, and Kelley is saved from having to respond by the sound of their phones going off simultaneously, Kelley’s a melodic dinging sound and Alex’s vibrating on the coffee table, and they know the email they both just received must be team business. Alex opens hers and begins to read, rattling off the important details to Kelley. 

“Hotel information coming later, fitness prep details attached, and three new rookies joining us for their first camp.” 

It’s all pretty routine, and Kelley doesn’t even bother opening her email to read it herself, choosing instead to continue listening to Alex as she talks her way through the important or interesting bits. 

“Do you know anything about a player named Sonnett?” Alex asks, skimming over the names of the rookies to see if she’s familiar with any of them. “It says she’s a defender. And she’s from your neck of the woods.”

“Georgia?” 

“And Jersey, too. She plays at Rutgers.”

Having shared a field for three seasons now, Kelley has caught a few Rutgers games and run into some of the girls in various shared training facilities. It hasn’t reached the point where she’s learned many of their names, but she can think of several faces she’s familiar with and wonders if any of those faces belong to this rookie.

“It doesn’t sound familiar.” When she glances over she can see that Alex is already typing the name into google, scrolling quickly through images to find a good one to show to Kelley. When she turns the phone around Kelley’s jaw drops. 

“No fucking way,” she says, her voice barely reaching above a whisper. The words are more for herself than for Alex, but Alex catches them anyway and looks perplexed. Kelley grabs the phone from Alex’s hand, scrolling quickly through more photos and confirming what she could have been sure of with the first photo.

“Do you recognize her?” Alex asks, her frown growing deeper, her facial expression more concerned the longer Kelley frantically flips through photos of the rookie. 

“You could say that,” Kelley says, handing Alex’s phone back to her. “She tried to pick me up in a bar the other day.” 

It’s not outside of the realm of possibility that two different people could have made a move on Kelley at a bar in the span of a couple of days, but it doesn’t take more than a moment for Alex to make the connection between first names and know this is the same girl they’ve been talking about since Alex got home. 

“No way,” she says, her eyes widening. “You didn’t tell me she was a soccer player.” 

“I would have had to have known that to tell you,” Kelley says, waiting for Alex to come around to the big picture. 

Alex shakes her head. “You didn’t talk about soccer?”

“She acted like she didn’t recognize me.” Kelley isn’t even sure whether she’s upset because she feels like this rookie pulled one over on her or if she’s offended at the idea of not being recognizable in the soccer world. She pushes away the feeling that what’s bothering her is something deeper, something to do with the excitement of a stranger being interested in her being stomped down in the space of a few seconds, a crush she didn’t want to admit to having being tainted. 

“Kelley-” Alex begins, and it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t know what else to say because Kelley doesn’t let her continue. 

“I know how egotistical that sounds, but come on, Al. I’m supposed to believe that someone invested enough to be called up to the national team doesn’t know who is on it?” Kelley pauses, giving Alex enough time to think of an answer, but speaking again before she can say it. “Tell me you didn’t know way more than the name of every player who was on the team long before you showed up to camp for the first time.” 

Alex is silent, and Kelley knows it’s because she’s right. They were both youth players once, and while Kelley knows she isn’t an Alex Morgan or an Abby Wambach, she’s still on the team. She’s been on the team since she was twenty-two, and she’d like to think she’s an important part of it. 

“Plus, I told her I play. I said ‘I play professional soccer’ and she didn’t say anything to that,” Kelley continues, replaying that part of their phone call in her mind and realizing that, in all likelihood, Emily had already known most of the things Kelley had told her about her career. “I went on and on about how soccer means my schedule is kind of hectic and how I didn’t know when I’d be back in town so we could have dinner.” 

“Well, at least now you know when you’ll be able to see her again,” Alex says, and Kelley would hate her optimism if it wasn’t part of the reason she loved her so much. 

“Monday 9 AM practice on turf wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Kelley says, knowing that whatever she had in mind wouldn’t have an opportunity to come to fruition before they see each other on the field. She wonders if Emily will call and fess up, if she knows by now the game is up. Will she call tomorrow like she said she would and act like nothing has changed? Will she have an excuse ready? Will she avoid calling altogether?

“If you want to look on the bright side,” Alex says. Kelly doesn’t want to look on the bright side, but she doesn’t interrupt. “Scheduling just got a lot easier for you two.” 

“Oh yeah,” Kelley says, putting as much sarcasm as she can behind her next words. “Maybe we’ll even be roommates. The epitome of convenience.” 

Alex scrunches up her nose in mock disgust then shrugs, laughing as she stands up from the couch. 

“I love you, Kells, but you’re stressing out about this way more than you need to,” Alex says, standing in front of Kelley, one hand on each of her shoulders. “It’ll all work out. Who knows, maybe it’ll all be really really good.” 

“I hate it when you’re all supportive like this,” Kelley says, pouting but placing her hand over Alex’s to show she doesn’t really mean it. 

“No you don’t.” She gives Kelley an exaggerated kiss on the forehead before disappearing back into the kitchen where Kelley can hear her resume putting the groceries away. 

Kelley takes out her phone, finding Emily’s number below Jill’s in her incoming call log. She hadn’t noticed before, but it catches her eye that it’s a Georgia number, unsurprising since Alex had read earlier that she’s from Georgia. Still, she cracks a smile at the idea of two Georgian soccer players banished to Jersey meeting somewhat less than serendipitously at a bar less than two weeks before they would have met anyway at training. Christen would call it a sign, but Kelley isn’t sure she believes in that. 

Alex emerges from the kitchen as Kelley is typing “Emily Sonnett” to save the number into her contacts. She sits down on the coffee table opposite Kelley, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. 

“Just so we’re we’re all on the same page,” Alex says, her tone low and her facial expression serious. “When did you start using ‘I play professional soccer’ as a pick up line, because that’s pretty low, Kell, even for you.” 

In an instant, a throw pillow is flying through the air, hitting Alex square in the side of the face. Kelley holds her hands up, palms toward Alex in what would be the perfect plea of innocence if it weren’t for the smirk on her face and the fact that Alex had watched the whole attack unfold. 

“Just trying to expand my repertoire,” Kelley says, still smirking as she tries and fails to feign seriousness. “I felt like ‘Wanna see my gold medal?’ and ‘Yeah, I do know Alex Morgan’ were getting a little old.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates won't always come this quickly, but what are holiday weekends for if not procrastination? I hope you're still enjoying it! Next chapter we'll see more of Emily, Rose, and Lindsey. 
> 
> Let me know what you think here or at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com <3


	4. Girls Gather Round Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There isn't a whole lot of talk about Emily/Kelley in this chapter, but I feel like the Emily/Rose/Lindsey friendship is kind of the foundation of this story and I wanted some time to develop that before jumping back into the So'Hara drama. I hope you'll forgive me and enjoy this chapter :)

Emily spends the first half hour after hanging up with Jill trying to wrap her head around the impact that phone call is going to have on her life. She doesn’t move from the couch, just lays there, staring up at the ceiling and letting a million thoughts filter through her head. Senior national team training camp is a big fucking deal, especially for someone, like Emily, who hasn’t been much of a presence in the youth system. She’s trained with them here and there since she was younger, but it never seemed to work out. Not like Rose, who has represented the team at every level, making a name for herself before she ever set foot on a college campus. 

She always thought it would be Rose who would get the call, and when she thought about it she alternated between adamantly reminding herself that when the moment came she would be proud of her best friend and selfishly hoping it might happen in Rose’s senior year, after Emily had already graduated, so that she would hear the news over the phone and not have to try as hard to hide her disappointment. She hadn’t even considered that it might be Emily, not Rose, who would be sitting her friends down and giving them this news. 

Emily is shaken from her thoughts eventually by the feeling of her phone vibrating against her leg where she dropped it on the sofa beside her. She unlocks it to find a new email in her inbox, the subject announcing “JANUARY 2016 CAMP DETAILS” in all capital letters. Seeing the message there makes it all feel a little more real, and Emily finally lets herself feel the rush of excitement she’s been trying to suppress since the moment she hung up with coach Ellis. She reads the email, trying to take in every little detail, from hotel and training accommodations, to gear pick up, to meals and recommended fitness regimens to arrive prepared. An attached schedule has practice times as well as other events, including team meetings and, she feels the butterflies in her stomach kick up a notch as she reads, a photoshoot to debut new kits for the new year. 

The second to last paragraph in the email, immediately preceding brief well wishes from the coaches and the customary pleasantries about “can’t wait to see you all on the field,” is an announcement that three new rookies have been called into camp. Emily glances over the other two names and finds her own, and she can’t stop herself from smiling, seeing it written there in black and white. Her smile only falters slightly as she remembers that everyone on the team received this email, and she wonders whether Kelley has put the pieces together yet, whether she took the time to check out the rookies and realize that one of them would be familiar to her. 

Emily reads the email quickly two more times before grabbing her laptop from her backpack and writing out a quick email announcing the news, taking the time to copy and paste it several times, replacing the names of various coaches, friends, and relatives. She wants to call her parents and tell them the news over the phone, but before she gets the chance there is a knock at the door. 

“Coming,” she shouts, closing her laptop and stuffing it back in her backpack before hurrying over to unlock the door to her apartment. She expects to see either Rose or the pizza delivery guy on the other side. She is not expecting what she gets, which is Rose, balancing two pizzas and an order of mozzarella sticks on her outstretched arms. She looks down at the pizzas then back up at Rose, raising her eyebrows questioningly. 

“I ran into the pizza guy in the lobby,” Rose says, shrugging as she pushes past Emily into the apartment. 

“And he just gave you my pizzas?” Emily asks, turning around without closing the door behind her. 

“I told him I was you,” Rose says. “I don’t think he believed me, because he’s the same guy we always get, but he gave me the pizzas anyway.” She puts the pizzas down on the coffee table and disappears into the kitchen. 

“I’m pretty sure taking other people’s food from their own lobby is some sort of felony,” Emily shouts after her. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s sort of my pizza, too,” Rose shouts back. 

“What is going on in here?” 

When Emily turns around, Lindsey is standing in the doorway, the front door still wide open from Rose’s entry. 

“Just the usual,” Emily says, gesturing for Lindsey to come in and shut the door behind her. “Never a dull moment with Rose.” 

Emily sits back on the couch, opening the top pizza box and taking out a slice of hawaiian pizza, just like Rose requested. She takes a bite, then tosses it back in the box, fanning her hand in front of her face to try to cool the effect of nearly liquid cheese on the roof of her mouth. 

“So uncivilized,” Rose deadpans, emerging from the kitchen with a stack of plates. She and Lindsey join Emily around the coffee table, Lindsey on the sofa beside Emily and Rose in the armchair across from them. They pass the plates around, digging into the pizza and talking about nothing in particular. 

Emily is on her second slice when Lindsey turns to her, putting her plate down before she says, “I’m assuming there’s a reason you wanted us to come over tonight.” 

It’s not a question, but Emily knows she is waiting for an answer. She takes another bite of her pizza, chewing slowly while she tries to figure out the best way to tell them her news. She’s known about it for less than two hours now, hardly enough time for the announcement to roll off her tongue. Still, she doesn’t know why she’s so nervous. These are her two best friends. 

She looks at Lindsey as she says, “I got a call up to the national team.” 

Short and to the point, she thinks. Her friends are quiet, but she knows she doesn’t have to repeat herself. Rose wouldn’t miss the words “call up” from a mile away, and even though Lindsey doesn’t play she has spent enough time with Emily and Rose to understand what’s going on. Emily glances at Rose, whose eyes are wide, then back at Lindsey, whose face is finally breaking into a grin. 

Suddenly there’s a high pitched squeal and Lindsey’s arms are around her, squeezing her tightly while she repeats “Yes, oh my god! Em, yes!” over and over in various iterations. When she lets go, Rose has made her way around the coffee table and is standing in front of Emily. She leans down and gives her a hug, briefer than Lindsey’s but no less meaningful. 

“I’m so happy for you,” Rose says, squeezing onto the sofa beside Emily, and Emily knows she means it. 

“You’ll be next,” Emily says to Rose, nudging her with her shoulder. 

“Obviously,” Rose says, shrugging.

“Never let it be said that Rose Lavelle lacks self confidence,” Lindsey says, reaching over Emily to tug at Rose’s ponytail. 

“So, how did it happen?” Rose asks, swatting away Lindsey’s hand before turning her full attention on Emily. 

She takes them through the story, from the moment she answered Coach Ellis’s phone call to the moment Rose arrived at her door, not sparing any details. Rose and Lindsey are a captive audience through the whole story, nodding and prompting her to go on, only teasing her about the fact that she thought that call might be a prank - “Even I’m not that mean,” Rose says - and whether or not her fitness level will be up to national team expectations - “Is half a hawaiian pizza on the list?” Lindsey asks - but otherwise making sure she knows how proud they are of her. 

Emily is reading aloud the list of players attending the camp, more for the benefit of Rose than Lindsey who barely knows more than one or two players on the team, when she comes to the defenders. 

“Whitney Engen. Julie Johnston. Ali Krieger. Meghan Klingenberg. Kelley O’Hara-” 

“Wait,” Lindsey interrupts. “Kelley, bar Kelley? From the other night?” 

Rose looks at her like this is a stupid question, but Emily answers. 

“Yes,” she says. “Kelley from the bar Kelley who is primarily Kelley from the National Team Kelley.” 

“You should have lead with that,” Lindsey jokes, though she does seem slightly more interested in this part of the conversation than she has been for most of the discussion of camp semantics. 

“I guess you better call her now,” Rose says, and Emily laments the fact that this is where the conversation has ended up, even though she knew it was inevitable. 

“Actually,” Emily pauses before continuing. She can feel both of her friends’ eyes on her, but she looks straight ahead rather than looking at either of them when she says, “I already did.” 

Lindsey is the first one to break the silence after several long moments, muttering, “Well, shit,” under her breath. That sets Rose off, and it’s not long before the two of them are giggling, Emily blushing red as she continues to avoid looking at them. Lindsey, at least, has the decency to try to muffle her laughter with a hand over her mouth. Rose is not so considerate. She laughs openly and loudly and when Emily steals a glance she thinks she sees Rose wiping away tears forming in her eyes. 

“Well, I’m glad the two of you think this is so goddamn hilarious,” Emily says, grabbing a throw pillow from behind her back and swinging it haphazardly at Rose, who grabs it and holds it over her face, making an effort to collect herself and return to the conversation. 

Lindsey must feel like she can control herself, because she removes her hand from over her mouth, taking a deep breath before speaking. 

“I’m sorry, Em, but you have to see how funny this is,” Lindsey says, a giggle slipping through the end of the sentence. 

“Nope, still not seeing it,” Emily says. She’s leaning back against the sofa now, pouting, her arms crossed over her chest. She knows she’s being a little melodramatic, but she doesn’t want Lindsey and Rose to think she approves of them right now. 

Rose sits up so she is looking at Emily. She’s still holding the pillow, but she’s managing to keep a more serious look on her face. 

“The two luckiest things to ever happen to you both happened in the past week,” Rose says, attempting an explanation. Emily wants to argue that making the national team is hard work, not luck, and that meeting Kelley doesn’t feel so lucky right now, but she keeps her mouth shut, waiting for Rose to continue. 

“If one of them had happened a couple days earlier, or the other a couple days later, you would be totally golden right now.”

“And we’re all laughing because the universe seemed to want to fuck with me this week?” Emily asks. 

“Pretty much,” Lindsey says, finally composed enough to rejoin the conversation. “The one time we talked you into hitting on a woman in a bar. And you can’t even be that mad because everything that has happened this week has been a good thing.” 

“Don’t be ungrateful,” Rose says, and Emily knows she’s aware that Emily hates when she says that because it makes her feel like she’s being scolded by her mother. 

“I’m not,” Emily says, “I’m grateful. I’ve never been more grateful. It just could have been a little less inconvenient timing.” 

“What did you guys talk about on the phone?” Lindsey asks, and for the second time tonight Emily is recapping a phone conversation from earlier in the day, trying to remember as much as she can, as close to verbatim as she can. Just like when she was telling them about the call from Coach Ellis, Lindsey and Rose are enraptured, maybe even more so this time in Lindsey’s case. 

“She sounds smitten with you,” Lindsey says when Emily has finished detailing the whole conversation, closing with Kelley’s teasing parting words. Emily feels her cheeks get warm again, and she briefly wonders whether she’s always been this quick to blush or whether her life has gotten infinitely more embarrassing lately, but she pushes that thought away for another time. 

“We’ve spoken twice, for a total of maybe thirty minutes and that’s being generous on timing,” Emily replies. “And even if she was ‘smitten’” - Emily puts finger quotes around the word, making sure Lindsey knows she doesn’t agree with it - “she’s going to be pissed when she finds out I lied through my teeth to her. Oh god, what if she tells everyone on the team? What if they all hate me before I even get there?” 

“Now you’re just being dramatic,” Lindsey says. On her other side, Rose has returned to her pizza, piling two more slices on her plate and biting a chunk off one, putting the responsibility on Lindsey to resolve Emily’s momentary panic. “Maybe she’ll think it’s sweet.” 

“Maybe she’ll think I was stalking her,” Emily says, covering her face with her hands. 

“Lying I could see, but stalking is an unfounded accusation,” Lindsey says. 

“You’re not helping,” Emily groans shaking her head. She feels a nudge on her arm, and when she removes her hands from over her eyes she sees Rose holding out her plate with a fresh slice of pizza on it. 

“Eat,” Rose says, and Emily accepts the plate from her, taking a bite and remembering for the first time since this conversation started that she worked out for two hours today and that she was starving while she waited for the pizza to arrive.

“And stop worrying,” Rose says, rolling her eyes in a way that is almost endearing in that Emily, after three years of friendship, knows it to mean “you’re an idiot but only because you can’t see what you have going for you.” 

“You’re going to show up at camp. You’re going to impress the hell out of everybody. And you’re going to look hot doing it.” Rose just shrugs as though this is the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Kelley won’t know what hit her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Emily arrives at camp. 
> 
> Let me know how you feel by leaving a comment or come talk to me at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com :)


	5. This Is What You Came For

Busy days are a fact of life when you’re a college athlete, and in the week before she flies out for camp, Emily has never been more thankful for that fact. When she’s not in her professors’ offices begging them for deadline extensions and guidance on how she can avoid falling behind while she’s away, she’s in the gym with Rose, trying to strike a balance between making whatever improvements in fitness she can in such a short time and still being able to walk the next morning. She studies with Lindsey, who is kind enough to remind her that she needs to eat and sleep every once in awhile, and in the precious few moments when she has nothing else to do, she gets ready to leave for camp, trying to locate, launder, and pack every piece of training gear she could possibly need, even knowing full well she’ll be provided with most of it in USSF colors when she arrives in Orlando.

And staying so busy serves another purpose: it doesn’t give her a spare five minutes to make a phonecall, or so she convinces herself. If she can barely find enough time to eat and sleep, her logic goes, she doesn’t have the time to try to explain herself to Kelley. If Kelley even wants to hear from her, if she’d even pick up the phone, which is another dilemma Emily doesn’t leave herself any time to get lost in.

All told, the week goes by pretty smoothly, which is why Emily is caught off guard when she gets a text update from the airline she is flying to Orlando telling her that due to inclement weather - a snowstorm that has been threatening to hit New Jersey for three days now but that she doubts will actually ever come to fruition - her flight on Sunday night has been canceled. With Lindsey rubbing her back and telling her not to panic, she finds the “For urgent problems” phone number in her email from US Soccer and calls, feeling like she can only breathe again when the gentleman on the other end of the line confirms that he was expecting this, that two other players flying out of the Northeast had been similarly affected, and that they would instead get her on a flight first thing in the morning.

What this means is that instead of arriving around dinner time on Sunday, sleeping in a hotel, and waking up around 8:00 for breakfast with the team - the first thing on her itinerary the next morning - Emily spends the night in her apartment, bribes Lindsey with unconditional love and junk food to drive her to the airport long before the sun is up in the morning, and gets a cab directly from the airport to the practice field, joining the rest of the team just after 10:00 for the remainder of their morning training session.

She leaves her suitcase in the locker room, quickly ties her cleats, and gets about thirty seconds worth of instruction from one of the assistant coaches on the sidelines before being thrown into the drills being carried out on the field. Only then does the whirlwind of the last 24 hours reveal its silver lining: that the team’s first impression of her won’t be some awkward small talk in the dining room or introductions in the locker room, neither of which Emily has ever considered herself very good at. She’s better at controlling the ball at her feet, stripping it off forwards, sending passes to the feet of her teammates, and that’s what they get to see. She’s exhausted after having gotten almost no sleep the night before, the thought of having to be out of bed in a few hours anyway keeping her awake most of the night, but once she hits the field she puts that all out of her mind, only concerned with the fact that this is her chance, and she isn’t going to waste a second of it.

Almost an hour has passed before there’s a shout from the bench, and though Emily doesn’t catch what was said, she can see the rest of the team gathering on the sidelines, grabbing water and congregating into small groups, and she follows suit. She takes an unclaimed bottle of water from the cooler, then drops down onto the grass along the periphery of the group. Looking around, she spots Kelley sitting on the bench, talking animatedly to a group of girls gathered around her. She realizes she’s been staring, and she’s not sure how long, when a shadow falls over her. Looking up, she realizes that the shadow belongs to a body.

“Is this grass taken?” the girl asks, and Emily squints up at her, trying to make out who it is while looking directly into the sun.

“All yours,” she says, and she finds herself sitting face to face with Morgan Brian.

“You’re Emily Sonnett, right?” Morgan asks. Emily is briefly surprised that Morgan knows who she is before remembering that there’s only three rookies at camp, and seeing as the other two were probably at breakfast it can’t have been that hard of a process of elimination.

“You’re either a really good guesser, or I’m the only newbie stupid enough to not make it to breakfast this morning,” Emily responds, and she feels a little more at ease when Morgan laughs.

“Actually I googled you,” she says, shrugging as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. “You and I are roommates this week, so when they told me you got stuck in Jersey last night I got curious.”

Emily isn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so she doesn’t. She takes another long sip from her water bottle, waiting to see if Morgan keeps talking.

“We’re both from Georgia,” Morgan offers, seemingly unconcerned with Emily’s silence. “Me, you, and Kelley makes three. Marietta, right?” Emily nods and Morgan continues. “I’ve got cousins around there.”

“Oh yeah?” Emily says, and Morgan carries on talking about where she’s from and rattling off names of family members she thinks Emily might know. She doesn’t recognize any of the names, but Morgan doesn’t seem bothered.

“You seem nervous,” Morgan says, apparently picking up on Emily’s quiet awkwardness in making small talk. Emily shrugs. “Well don’t be. I know the team can be a little intimidating sometimes. We act like we’ve known each other our entire lives, but we were all the new girl in camp at some point in time, actually pretty recently for some of us. One day you’re the newbie, and then before you know it you forget what it was like to not have all these idiots knowing all your business all the time.”

Emily knows that Morgan is relatively new on the team, having only been around a few years compared to some of the veterans’ decades or more. She knows they’re around the same age. She knows the other girls call her “Moe” and she wonders how long it took her to earn that nickname, to earn the right to use everyone else’s nicknames on the field and off. She wonders whether Morgan knows that Emily already knows more about her than what she’s offered up, even more than can be learned simply by reading her Wikipedia page. She pictures Morgan arriving at camp and nonchalantly telling the veteran players “I googled you” like she had just done to Emily. She bets they know, having all been young players once, and tries to picture Morgan and her teammates casually joking about how much they knew about one another before they knew each other at all. She hopes she’ll get to that point some day, where she feels enough of part of the team to not be terrified of coming off like more of a young fan than a new teammate.

“Anyway,” Morgan starts again when Emily remains quiet, keeping her concerns to herself. “As your roommate I am obligated to make sure you stop looking so terrified, so let’s go. I’m introducing you to the team.”

Morgan stands up, offering her hand and then pulling Emily to her feet next to her. She drags her group to group, introducing Emily to the keepers, who are gathered together sharing feedback with one another, to Ali, Crystal, and JJ, who are comparing photos from their Christmas vacations. They are rounding on the group where Kelley is still holding court when a whistle blows, calling them all back onto the field.

“You’ll have plenty of time to meet everyone later,” Morgan says, and then she’s off, jogging toward the center of the field with Emily falling into step beside her.

They run a few more drills, then break off into smaller groups for some 5 v 5 scrimmages. Over the next hour or so Emily finds herself falling into a rhythm with her side, feeling confident on the ball and quick on her feet. Before she knows it she’s shouting out nicknames, calling for the ball from “Kling” or “Press” like everyone else on the field is. For a few moments she forgets her doubts and her insecurities, just allowing herself to be present on the field, only brought back to the gravity of this particular training session compared to all the others that came before it when she glances up to see Jill Ellis on the sideline, watching them play and scribbling notes from time to time.

When the whistle finally blows again, the sun is high in the sky, and she is sweating, from the heat and from the effort of play. She follows Moe back into the locker room, grabbing her bags and hopping into a van with a group of young players who she has no trouble finding common ground with. It’s only a ten minute drive back to their hotel, but by the time they’re back she’s laughing along with a joke about Sam tripping over her own feet earlier that morning, relieved she seems to be fitting in.

\----------

She beats Moe in rock-paper-scissors for the honor of being the first to shower before they head down to lunch, and once she has dried off, dressed in a team issued tracksuit, and thrown her damp hair into a ponytail, Emily wanders down to the hotel lobby, trying to get the lay of the land before she has to rejoin the team in the dining room.

With a few minutes still left before lunch, Emily manages to track down the hotel business center, complete with complimentary coffee which she helps herself to, knowing she’s going to need it to get through afternoon training. She’s adding a third packet of sugar, which she considers one of her worst habits nutritionally, when she hears the door open and close behind her. She looks up to see Becky Sauerbrunn take an empty paper cup and begin filling it with coffee.

“How was your first practice?” Becky asks, her eyes still on the rising level of coffee in her cup. It’s not until she turns her head, smiling warmly in Emily’s direction, that Emily is completely sure Becky is talking to her.

“Fast,” Emily says, and before she can say anything more Becky laughs.

“I mean, compared to the speed of play in college,” Emily clarifies. “It’s a lot faster, and this was just day one.”

“You’re quick. You’ll get used to it.” Becky puts a lid on her coffee, leaving it black, and turns back toward Emily.

“Centerback, right?” she asks, and she appears to be sizing Emily up.

“Since freshman year,” she confirms.

“I keep telling Jill to stop calling in these young centerbacks,” Becky says, and Emily feels like her heart may have stopped beating. “I’m getting old and slow, and if she gets a glimpse of me trying to keep up with you guys I’m going to be out of a job.” Becky chuckles at her own joke and Emily joins in, laughing quietly and shaking her head.

“We need someone to show us the ropes,” she says. “Or at least I do.”

“Rule number one,” Becky says, and she leans in conspiratorially, Emily unconsciously following suit. “Never be late for lunch.” Becky cocks her head in what Emily thinks is the direction of the dining room, and she takes Becky’s lead, beginning to walk in that direction.

“Rule number two,” Becky says as they walk, “is never pass up free coffee, but it looks like you’ve already caught on to that one.” Emily nods, taking a sip of coffee to punctuate it.

“Nothing like hotel coffee,” she says, and Becky is laughing with her again.

“You figure out which ones are tolerable, which ones actually have surprisingly good coffee, and which hotels you would rather walk five miles to Starbucks than drink the hotel coffee. This one is distinctly middle of the line.”

As Becky speaks, they reach the door to the dining room. Emily reaches out and swings the door open, gesturing for Becky to pass through before following her. They make their way to the lunch buffet, where Emily piles her plate with greens and protein, trying to judge how many calories she needs to get through afternoon training, what will give her energy without weighing her down. Becky throws in a recommendation or two, and then they’re heading to a table. The circular table is mostly empty, except for one plate filled with food but left untouched, which Becky sits opposite from. Emily takes the seat next to Becky, and they continue to chat, Becky giving her tips about navigating camp and Emily interjecting from time to time to ask a question or answer one of Becky’s. Becky has just launched into a description of the fitness testing they’ll be subjected to the next day - which Emily is sure will be her least favorite part, if she even survives it, that is - when Emily looks up, catching site of Kelley entering the dining room.

She loses the thread of what Becky is saying to her as she follows Kelley around the room with her eyes. She heads to the buffet, flanked by Christen and Morgan. Kelley follows the other two women as they grab plates and begin to fill them, but doesn’t take one for herself. As Emily wonders why, she is brought back to the conversation she is supposed to be having by Becky’s hand on her arm. She startles a bit, and hopes Becky didn’t notice, although she is almost sure she won’t be that lucky.

“Sorry,” Emily says, trying to preempt the questions she knows Becky is going to ask. Afterall, she was being rude, tuning out of the advice Becky had been giving her to focus on problems of her own making. “I, uh, didn’t get much sleep last night, worrying about flights and everything. Which doesn’t excuse the fact that I totally just zoned out on you.”

Becky laughs it off, gesturing toward Emily’s plate.

“Better get some food in you,” she says. “Can’t have you going catatonic in training this afternoon.” Emily laughs, halfheartedly but it must be enough because Becky turns away from her and begins eating from her own plate, presumably giving Emily the space to do so as well. She’s pushing a too large bite of salad into her mouth when a chair on the other side of the table is pulled back, and she looks up to see Christen drop into it. Morgan sits down on one side of her, and on the other side, Kelley pulls back the chair in front of the plate that occupied the table before Emily and Becky did.

“I thought that was your plate,” Becky says as Kelley sinks into the seat on the opposite side of the table.

“What gave me away?” Kelley asks.

“Oh, just the veritable mountain of pasta. I know how you get right before fitness testing.”

Kelley laughs, shrugs, and digs into her pasta, briefly stalling any continuation of conversation at the table. All five women eat in silence for a few moments, the sound of conversation drifting around them from other tables. Emily puts another bite into her mouth before glancing up at Kelley who is, thankfully, fully focused on her lunch. Thankfully because it means she doesn’t catch Emily looking, but her total lack of attention on her current company means that Emily also has no idea what Kelley is thinking, if she’s even noticed Emily who worries she might have melted into a puddle on her chair on the other side of the table, her embarrassment ramping up now that she is in this close of proximity to Kelley.

“This is Emily, by the way,” Becky says after a few minutes, using her fork to gesture toward Emily, as though the other players needed confirmation of who she was talking about.

“Centerback. Senior at Rutgers.” Becky rattles off the relatively short list of things that she’s learned about Emily, filling in the others at the table.

“We’ve met,” Kelley says, and a look passes over her face so quickly Emily thinks she might have imagined it. It’s not cold or angry, it’s something else entirely. Something that looks like smugness mixed with curiosity mixed with what could be disappointment, but Emily can’t make sense of that. She tries to push it out of her mind, telling herself that she’s projecting. It doesn’t seem as though anyone else noticed it either.

“Same,” Morgan says, though the look on her face is unmistakably friendly. “And we get to be roommates this week.”

“Christen,” Christen says, reaching across the table to shake Emily’s hand, the smile on her face making Emily feel more at ease at the table.

“We were on the same 5 v 5 team this morning,” Christen says, and Emily nods and returns her smile.

“I was glad I wasn’t defending against you,” Emily says, referencing the several beautiful shots she saw Christen make over the course of the scrimmage, more than one of them resulting in a goal and at least one of the others making Alyssa really work to keep it out of the net.

“You’ll get that chance,” Becky says. “It’s not camp if Press doesn’t make you look like an idiot at some point.” Everyone at the table laughs at this, and they all launch into reminiscing about going up against one another, in practice and in the professional league.

Once her plate is empty, Emily leans over and quietly tells Morgan she’s going to head back up to their room, that she left her phone up there before lunch and wants to text her Lindsey and her family to let them know she arrived safely. She excuses herself from the table and heads out of the dining room, taking a moment outside the doors to reorient herself and remember where the elevators are located to take her back upstairs.

She presses the elevator call button and digs through her backpack for her keycard, trying to remember where she’d stashed it when she left for lunch and also what number room she was assigned to. She finds it - and the paper envelope it was inside when it was given to her with a neat “304” written on it - just as the elevator door is opening. She steps inside and presses the button for the third floor, stepping back to wait for the doors to close. After a moment, they do. Or they begin to, when a hand reaches out and sweeps between them, causing the doors to glide open again and bringing her face to face with Kelley.

“We need to talk,” Kelley says, stepping into the elevator and letting the doors close behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What?! You're going to leave it there?! Yes. I am. And you can blame a friend of mine who said "End it with a cliffhanger because then people will have to keep reading." 
> 
> Let me know what you think, ask me about my day, or send me messages that say "What the fuck always takes you so long?" at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com <3


	6. Easy conversations, there's no such thing

They ride the elevator to the third floor in silence. When the doors open, Kelley waits, allowing Emily to exit first and lead the way down the hall to her room. She wonders if it’s because Kelley knows Morgan is her roommate and is still sitting at their table in the dining room, if Kelley’s room is occupied by whoever her roommate is this camp. She doesn’t ask, figuring it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the conversation they’re about to have. 

Then she realizes she has no idea what conversation they’re about to have. For all she knows Kelley could be mad that Emily lied to her, she could be embarrassed that she let a rookie flirt with her, she could be annoyed she has to see Emily every day in what is now their shared workspace. There’s also the possibility that her feelings about the situation are positive, rather than the negative ones Emily has been entertaining, but the thought only crosses her mind briefly, pushed away by her memory of the look on Kelley’s face at lunch, the tone of her voice in the elevator. 

When they reach the door to Emily’s room, Kelley stops behind her. It takes Emily two tries to get the door unlocked, inserting the card too slowly at first and getting no response from the light on the door handle, no click of the lock. She feels herself getting embarrassed over something so insignificant, but something that is just another reminder to Kelley as she looks on that Emily is inexperienced, a rookie, that her hands are shaking under Kelley’s observation. 

Then she hears the click of the door unlocking, she pushes it open and then moves to the side, letting Kelley enter before closing the door behind them. She drops her backpack on the floor beside her bed, tosses the key card down on the bedside table and waits. She has no idea what to say, and even if she did, Kelley initiated this conversation and Emily assumes she did so with some idea of how she wanted it to go. The best course of action, she tells herself, is to let Kelley say her piece, to let her steer the conversation the way she had planned when she stuck her hand between the elevator doors. Neither of them sit down, and after several long moments, the silence is becoming unbearable. 

Finally, Kelley speaks up. 

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she asks, and Emily is disappointed in the open ended nature of the question. She didn’t expect that Kelley’s plan would be to force Emily to control the conversation, but she knows that it’s only fair. It was Emily who got them into this situation and she’ll have to be the one to get them out. 

“What do you want me to say?” she asks, trying to stall as she figures out how she’s going to answer Kelley’s concerns, but even as the words are coming out of her mouth she knows it’s a stupid thing to say. She knows it’s something she shouldn’t need to say. It’s been a week since she knew she would be in this position, even more time since she first met Kelley at the bar, and she’s had adequate time to figure out how she would explain herself, but instead of trying to synthesize something to say so she wouldn’t look like a complete idiot, Emily spent that time actively avoiding thinking about the problem she was dealing with, choosing instead to pretend like this moment wasn’t coming. 

Emily stands by the door, her hands fidgeting with one another and her eyes focused on the carpet rather than on Kelley, who stands a few feet away. When Emily glances up she meets Kelley’s eyes, which are trained on her. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she looks confident, defiant, while Emily wishes she could disappear from this spot altogether. She’s never been good at confrontation, or really at conversation at all. It’s part of the reason Lindsey and Rose tease her so much. 

“Say anything,” Kelley responds to Emily’s muttered question. “As long as it’s the truth.” 

“Would you believe I didn’t recognize you?” Emily asks, in direct opposition to what Kelley just asked of her. Still, it’s something, and Emily figures the sooner she starts talking the sooner this will be over, and just maybe she’ll find the confidence to not be a total baby before that happens. 

“No,” Kelley scoffs, not offering up anymore than that. 

“Would you believe I had good intentions?” Emily tries again, and this time it is the truth. 

“Which were what exactly?” 

This stops Emily in her tracks once again, and if she had any capacity for thought beyond the part of her brain that was just trying to churn out a response to the question she would be cursing herself for not giving this any thought earlier. If she could put her intentions into words she’s pretty sure they would be good, but right now she’s having trouble remembering why she did what she did. She’s fully aware that “Rose and Lindsey made me do it” and “I have had a stupidly large crush on you since I was 17” are not good explanations, nor did either of them require her to lie about the fact that she knew who Kelley was. 

“Whenever you’re ready,” Kelley says after Emily is silent for just a little too long, but Emily knows the urging is as much out of practicality as it is impatience, due to the fact that they’re expected to meet back up with the team in a matter of minutes. 

“I’m an idiot,” Emily concedes, and she hears Kelley exhale sharply, poorly concealed laughter, she thinks, and it gives her the push she needs to keep going. 

“I am a total loser who lets my friends talk me into things they know I would never do if it wasn’t to get them off my back. I saw you that day, and I wanted to talk to you, and to be honest I’m pretty sure this whole us playing together thing would be way more awkward if I had asked you to, like, sign my jersey, so I think we can both be grateful that didn’t happen.” Kelley opens her mouth to respond, but Emily continues before she can get anything out. 

“I’m sorry I lied to you, really I am. But other than pretending not to recognize you everything I have said to you has been genuine, which, now that I think about it is also a little embarrassing, so if we could just put it behind us and move on I would really really appreciate that.” 

It’s silent in the room for a moment, as Kelley and Emily both wait to see whether she’s finished talking. After a few seconds, Emily ascertains that, yes, she has said everything she needed to say, and makes eye contact with Kelley, expectantly, waiting for her response. 

“Whose jersey?” is the first thing she says. 

Emily is caught off guard, and it takes her a moment to understand what Kelley is asking, to realize that out of everything she had said, that one detail was what Kelley fixated on. 

“That is so not the point of this conversation,” Emily replies, her hand going to her cheek to try to cover the blush spreading across her face. 

“Emily,” Kelley says, and her tone is serious this time, so Emily leans in a bit, keeping eye contact and waiting for what Kelley is going to say, thinking this is either going to be the forgiveness or the admonishment that she came into this conversation looking for. 

“Is it my jersey?” is what she says instead, and Emily would laugh at the self-satisfied look on Kelley’s face if she wasn’t absolutely mortified. 

“It might be,” Emily admits, and Kelley is laughing, the sound blowing away the last of the tension in the room. She settles herself down onto the edge of Emily’s bed, and Emily follows suit, perching on the edge of Morgan’s bed, though she is much less at ease than Kelley seems to be. 

“That,” Kelley says through a pause in her laughter, cocking her head to the side to smirk at Emily. “Is adorable. Did you pack it? I can still sign it. It’s not too late, you know.” 

Emily is caught between feeling horrified and feeling relieved. It’s become obvious now that Kelley isn’t going to hate her, isn’t going to freeze her out or convince the team to do the same. Still, she thinks it’s going to take some time before being in the same room as Kelley doesn’t bring back the embarrassment of having used what basically amounts to a cheesy pick up line on her. 

“It’s not funny,” Emily says shaking her head. 

“It so is,” Kelley shoots back, and before she knows it, she’s giggling along with Kelley’s loud, joyful laughter. She can’t help that she finds the sound of it contagious. 

“Does this mean we’re okay?” Emily asks when their laughter finally dies down to a quiet giggling. 

Kelley looks her up and down, then stands, moving to take a seat beside Emily on the other bed. She puts her hand out, the same way Emily did when they first met in the bar, and if it felt unduly formal then it feels just downright ridiculous now, two weeks later in a hotel room where they are both recovering from a fit of laughter. Still, Emily takes her hand, and they shake on it as Kelley replies. 

“We’re good, Sonnett,” she says, and Emily can’t help but hold herself a little straighter, hearing the way her last name rolls off of Kelley’s tongue. “We’re friends.” 

Emily nods, but Kelley must see something shift in her expression, because she doesn’t stop there, continuing on to offer an explanation.

“I don’t get involved with teammates,” she says. 

“That’s a good policy,” Emily responds, resisting the urge to ask if that means that if they weren’t teammates she would be interested in getting involved. She’s crossed enough lines over the last few weeks, it’s best if she leaves that one alone. 

“And you shouldn’t either,” Kelley says, looking Emily in the eye. “No flirting with Alex at fitness tomorrow and pretending you’ve never seen her before.” She’s smirking again, and Emily smiles back. If this is going to be their friendship, Kelley teasing Emily and Emily trying to hide her embarrassment and play along while she tries to catch up, she thinks she’s okay with that. She knows she’s okay with it if it means spending more time with Kelley, if it means being the audience to her smile and her laughter at her own jokes. 

“Not sure I can keep that promise,” Emily says, forcing her tone as deadpan as she can get it. “I don’t know if you’ve seen her lately, but Alex is pretty attractive.” 

“Oh, I’ve seen her,” Kelley says, rolling her eyes but blushing slightly. Emily files that away as something to wonder about at a later time. “And she’ll see right through you. She knows all about your little bar tricks.” 

Emily’s eyes go wide at that, her cheeks burning once again. 

“Oh god, does the whole team know?” she asks, running a hand nervously through her ponytail as she imagines the locker room banter they could get from this. She already knows she’ll never live it down with Kelley. She’s not sure she can handle the teasing from two dozen other women. 

“Just Alex,” Kelley corrects quickly, and Emily lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “And you don’t have to worry about her. She won’t give you a hard time about it.” 

“She doesn’t stoop to your level, huh?” Emily asks, and this time it’s her turn to smirk. Talking to Kelley feels competitive in some ways. Like she’ll be rewarded for getting a leg up, for making a quicker joke or a wittier comeback, and Emily has always thrived on competition. Her reward this time is another burst of bright laughter from Kelley, and then her response. 

“You knew who I was when you flirted with me,” she says. “So the way I see it, you were kind of asking for it. You should have known better.” 

“Yeah, you’re right,” Emily jumps back in quickly. “Totally not worth it. If I was going to make a complete fool of myself, I should have aimed higher.”

“I’ll have you know I am very popular. And I have heard that some people even buy my jerseys.” 

As they dissolve into another fit of laughter, the door swings open, and Morgan walks in. She’s in the middle of a text, but she looks up when she hears Kelley and Emily, looking back and forth between the two of them with a puzzled look on her face, as though she’s trying to determine whether she should be concerned or not. 

“What are you two up to?” she says, her brows furrowed. She throws her phone down onto the bed, her text forgotten in favor of the two women in front of her. 

“Just welcoming the newbies,” Kelley says, standing up and facing Morgan. “We’ve all got to do our part to make them feel welcome, Moe.” 

Morgan rolls her eyes at the exaggerated sincerity in Kelley’s voice. 

“I thought your job was to try your best not to scare them away?” Moe shoots back, and Emily is really starting to like her. The combination of dry humor and quick wit reminds her of Rose, and as Kelley and Moe continue to banter, she looks back and forth between them, thinking that if this is any indication of how fitting in on the team is going to go, it might not be so tough after all. She whips her head around as she feels Kelley’s arm drape over her shoulder, leaning into her as though they are teen detectives posing for a conspiratorial photograph. 

“Besides,” she is in the middle of trying to rebut Moe’s accusation that she comes on too strong sometimes. “Sonnett and I go way back.” Moe looks incredulous and Emily wonders if she has the same look on her face. 

“Us Georgian Jersey Gals gotta stick together,” Kelley says in an exaggerated southern drawl. In another instant her arm is gone, and she’s dodging Moe to head for the door. She stops with her hand on the door knob, never one to miss the opportunity to have the last word. 

“Goodbye old friend,” she nods toward Moe. “New friend -” nodding toward Emily. “- Don’t forget bus leaves in a few minutes. I’ve already got you both penciled in for an ass kicking via fitness testing tomorrow, getting one from Becky today as well would just be overkill.” And with that she is gone, the door drifting shut behind her. 

“Does she always have that much energy?” Emily asks, although she’s pretty sure she already knows the answer. Moe just shrugs. 

“You get used to it.” 

Somehow, Emily doubts that she ever will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all really made me feel bad about the whole cliffhanger thing, so I hope this chapter is up to your expectations. But this is just the beginning, believe me there's a lot more to come. 
> 
> If you are concerned about my education, tell me to stop procrastinating at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com


	7. Tell your friends it was nice to meet them

The rest of Monday passes relatively uneventfully. Emily spends the afternoon silently cursing whoever invented two-a-days and then herself for not keeping up with her training as well as she should have in the off season, but she just barely manages to get through the drills without falling on her face, so she counts that as a victory. On her way out of the locker room, Coach Ellis stops to tell her it was a “good first day” and she tries to stop herself from grinning about it the entire way back to the hotel.

She meets more of her teammates at dinner, with Moe - as she insists Emily calls her because “Everyone else does don’t be weird” - introducing her and rattling off bits of her life story to get the conversation started. It’s enjoyable, meeting all of the players she’s looked up to, but she’s grateful when dinner is over, her exhaustion starting to set in. Moe has the same idea, and they retire to their shared room, settling in for as much sleep as they can get before the early wake up call of the next day’s fitness testing.

After a quick breakfast, two cups of coffee, and a short ride to the training facility, Emily is laid out beside Moe in a corner of the gym, each of them on a thin mat to cushion their backs, waiting for the shout to begin their sit ups. It reminds Emily of middle school, when every kid in eighth grade had to attempt a series of physical challenges, culminating in some sort of an award for whoever could do the most sit ups, the fastest mile, the furthest stretch. Emily had done one more pull up than one of the boys in her class, and he had been on the verge of tears. She imagines this day is about to go very differently, and if there are tears they’re going to be coming from her. As they start their first sit up, she is thankful for having Moe to chat with as a distraction. She is less thankful for the topic of conversation.

“So, I didn’t know you and Kelley knew each other,” Moe says, her eyes still trained on the ceiling to keep her head and neck in the proper position. Emily is similarly positioned, but she knows Moe is talking to her.

“We don’t,” she says curtly, a byproduct of her discomfort with the conversation as well as her focus being pulled by the strain on her muscles as she moves up and down through more sit ups than she’s done in months.

When she glances over, Moe’s brow is furrowed, and Emily can tell she’s trying to work out whether she heard Kelley wrong or whether Kelley was up to something far more sinister than she let on the day before. Emily wonders what will happen if she doesn’t explain, but she likes Moe and she wants to be her friend, and she feels like she can trust her, so she continues.

“Well, not really. I go to Rutgers. She trains there. We crossed paths.” She pauses there for a moment, testing the waters. Maybe that will be enough. Of course, it’s not, and Moe asks the natural follow up question.

“A lot?”

“Just once actually,” Emily says, and she finds herself smiling thinking about it, a complete turnaround from 24 hours earlier when she would have been more comfortable reliving the black eye she had gotten in a collision with an opponent last season than spending a moment remembering the time she spent flirting with Kelley. After their conversation the day before, the memory seems almost nice.

“And it was that memorable?” Moe continues to probe. Emily wonders how many more sit ups would render Moe unable to carry on a conversation, then remembers that Moe has been training with this team for years now, so it’s probably enough sit ups to leave Emily unable to get up off the ground for the rest of the day.

“It only happened a couple weeks ago. We were in a bar.” Emily’s pale skin is flushed from exertion, but she swears she can feel it heat up just a tiny bit more. There’s another shout from the training staff, the signal to take a break. Emily lies flat where she landed after her last sit up, but Moe pushes herself up, sitting so Emily can see her in her peripheral vision.

“And you guys, what? Chatted?”

“Something like that.”

“Gossiping with you is like pulling teeth,” Moe says, climbing to her feet. The expression reminds Emily of her mom, who always used the same expression to describe trying to get Emily and her sister to clean their room or fold their laundry. It’s probably that familiarity that gets her to finally admit what she had been trying to avoid.

“I flirted with her.” As she says it, Moe is offering her a hand to help her off the ground. She takes the hand, but as Moe hears what she has just said, her arm goes limp, making no attempt to pull Emily to her feet.

“No way,” she says, her hand still clasped in Emily’s, still offering no real assistance.

“Yes way,” Emily replies, finally just letting go of Moe’s hand and pushing herself up off the ground.

“Define ‘flirted’,” Moe asks, her thoughts seemingly having returned to her control and her curiosity overtaking her shock.

“I think I told her I thought she was hot, and then I bought her a drink. We talked. She gave me her number.” Emily summarizes briefly, though not inaccurately. She likes the way Moe wears her thoughts in the expression on her face. Since their first conversation on the field the day before, Emily has realized that Moe has no poker face whatsoever. If she’s thinking something, everyone in the room can tell. And right now she’s both baffled and entertained by what she’s hearing. And she’s not going to leave without the full story.

“After you knew you were getting called up?”

“A few days before, actually,” Emily says, glancing around to see if anyone is around to hear their conversation. If she’s learned anything from the team in her first day with them, it’s that they love to talk, so it’s only a matter of time before the whole team knows about her first encounter with Kelley, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to try her best to drag that time out.

Moe starts to ask another question, but Emily puts her hand up, stopping her before she can get anything out.

“Like two weeks ago I saw Kelley in a bar, and my friends convinced me to go talk to her. I didn’t know I was going to be called up to this camp, or ever really. And also I pretended not to know who she was.”

Moe’s eyes are wide now, and she’s muffling a giggle behind her hand.

“Obviously she knows now,” Emily adds. “That’s what we were talking about in our room yesterday after lunch.”

“I cannot believe you hit on Kelley,” Moe says, no longer muffling her laughter so that the few people nearest to them are starting to notice.

“Well, believe it,” Emily says, rolling her eyes. “But it’s not, like, a thing, okay? We both agreed that we don’t get involved with teammates.”

Emily briefly notices a change in Moe’s expression, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it before they’re being called across the gym, gathered into a group around Dawn to be briefed on their next test.

\------

On the other side of the fitness center, Kelley pedals slowly on a stationary bike, her eyes closed, earbuds in, music cranked loud, gearing up mentally and physically for the upcoming endurance tests. Her eyes open when she feels a hand on her shoulder. It’s gone before she has the time to look, but Alex is climbing onto the bike beside her, fiddling with the controls. As she begins pedaling she turns to Kelley, asking Kelley to take her headphones out by miming the action on her own ears. Kelley rolls her eyes, but complies.

“You didn’t tell me you had a rendez-vous with your college girl crush after lunch yesterday,” Alex says, and Kelley makes a mental note to get back at Moe even though she had no reason to think that telling Alex about seeing Kelley and Emily talking would be wrong.

“I told you to stop calling her that,” Kelley replies. “And it wasn’t a rendez-vous -” Kelley exaggerates the French pronunciation to show Alex just how ridiculous she thinks this conversation is “-it was just a conversation. Just trying to get everything out in the open.”

“How did it go?”

“I told her I don’t get involved with teammates.” She’s deliberately not looking at Alex when she says this, but she doesn’t need to look to know that Alex isn’t going to let her get away with that.

“I thought the whole point of the conversation was to move away from the dishonesty,” Alex says, and when Kelley looks at her again the look on her face is like she’s caught a child stealing cookies from the cookie jar. Or Kelley stealing cookies from the cookie jar, for that matter. She does not look impressed.

“Yeah, her dishonesty,” Kelley argues. “Besides, I wasn’t lying. I don’t date teammates.”

“Since when?” Alex is downright smirking now, and Kelley would throw something at her if there was anything within reach. Christen always says that Kelley and Alex get along so well because they’re the only two people she has ever met who can manage to look so smug and so charming at the same time, and that the universe made them friends because only they could appreciate that quality in one another. Kelley doesn’t think she appreciates it much at the moment.

“Since right now,” she replies. “Or yesterday when I said it. Or technically since-”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” Alex doesn’t let Kelley continue. She knows exactly where this conversation is going and in the gym warming up for fitness testing is neither the time nor the place to rehash past mistakes.

“New year, new Kelley,” she shrugs, upping the resistance on the bike enough to get her blood flowing, but not enough to waste her energy for the beep test she knows is coming. She’s almost looking forward to it, knowing there are very few people on the team who can even come close to her record and getting ready to bask ungraciously in the victory.

“New Kelley is weird, and everyone knows New Year’s resolutions never last.”

Kelley hops off her bike, coming around to rest her elbows on the handlebars on the front of Alex’s, looking up at her as she asks, “Why are you so invested in this anyway?”

It’s Alex’s turn to shrug, and she stops pedaling, letting her legs dangle then touching her feet to the floor so she can stand, leaning in closer to Kelley and speaking quietly.

“I guess I just thought you were finally going to get laid,” she says. In Kelley’s moment of stunned silence, Alex swings around and heads for the water cooler against the wall. As she fills a cup with water, Kelley catches up to her. She hands the cup to Kelley, who takes it gratefully even under the circumstances of their current conversation, and fills another for herself. She is taking a sip when Kelley speaks again.

“If you’re going to insist on talking about this, can you please just keep your voice down?,” Kelley takes stock of the room while she’s saying this. She find Emily immediately, among the players being lectured by Dawn on the ins and outs of some agility test. There are five or six other players gathered around the trainer, another half dozen in the far corner of the room, milling about the radio while Crystal demonstrates some dance move to the rest of them. The other dozen or so players are scattered around the room, none of them very close to Kelley and Alex, but she lowers her voice anyway and levels out her tone to convey the seriousness of her request.

“I told her you wouldn’t tell anyone. I get the feeling she’s actually kind of embarrassed about the whole thing.”

“Embarrassed that she flirted with you or embarrassed that she got caught?” Alex is trying to get a rise out of her, but for once Kelley doesn’t take the bait.

“Probably both. She’s shy. It’s actually kind of sweet.” Kelley tosses her empty cup at the nearest trashcan and misses. She bends down to pick it up, and when she turns back around Alex looks delighted, far too delighted for Kelley’s liking.

“Don’t look at me like that. She’s a new teammate. I just want her to feel welcome. No ulterior motive.”

“Whatever you say,” Alex is shaking her head, and Kelley is about to dismiss the subject once and for all when she’s interrupted.

“By the way,” Alex leans in, dropping her tone like Kelley had before. “She’s been staring at you since you got off the bike.”

She turns to look where Alex is indicating with the tilt of her head and makes eye contact with Emily. She can see out of the corner of her eye that Alex is no longer paying attention to her, probably enjoying having the last word. Kelley holds eye contact with Emily for just a moment longer, before winking, turning on her heel, and heading off in the opposite direction to stretch out.

\------

The beep test is everything Emily imagined it would be and everything she hoped it wouldn’t be. Not that she hasn’t done it a thousand times, but it’s somehow different when HAO runs by looking like she’s barely breaking a sweat while Emily feels like she might vomit if she tries to drag this out any longer. In college and on her youth teams she has always fallen close to the middle of the pack, doing well enough for the coaches to not take notice, but never anything to brag about. Today, she’s just glad she didn’t come dead last. She’s slumped against the wall, where she’s been since she dragged herself away from the track to watch the rest of the team finish, HAO just narrowly squeezing out a victory over Kelley, who looked more impressed than disappointed.

She’s finally catching her breath when Alex sits down beside her, tossing Emily a bottle of water, which she just barely manages to catch, and putting her feet out in front of her to stretch. As she leans forward, gripping the soles of her feet, she looks over at Emily.

“I know you probably feel like death right now, but you’re going to feel worse tomorrow,” she says.

“Gee, thanks,” Emily says, taking a sip of water and then rolling the bottle back to Alex.

Alex releases her feet and leans back, grabbing the water bottle and squeezing some on her hand, using it to smooth her hair down around her headband.

“What I’m saying is, don’t skimp on recovery,” Alex says. Emily is studying her, wondering what her first few days of camp were like. She wonders whether she and Alex will be friends someday, spurred along by the fact that Alex knows a mortifying secret about her and that’s what all good friendships are built on, right? Or maybe, Emily thinks, she came over here because she knew she could make me squirm. As she’s trying to figure Alex out, she catches Emily’s attention again. Alex continues on speaking as though there had been no pause after what she last said.

“Ice baths this afternoon,” she raises one eyebrow, and Emily can’t help but think she’s expected to be in on some joke she knows nothing about. Someone is calling Alex’s name from the other side of the room, so she pushes herself to her feet. Emily grabs the water bottle from where Alex had left it between them on the floor and offers it to her. As she places it in Alex’s hand, Alex gives her one last once over.

“Enjoy it,” she says. And then she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I wondered while I was writing this chapter: What are the logistics of the beep test? Why is the singular form of cookies not cooky? Does Kelley have a mysterious past? How many sit ups would render Moe unable to carry on gossiping? Will I ever be this productive in real life stuff? 
> 
> Just kidding, I know the answer to one of those questions. 
> 
> Do anything but try to explain the beep test to me at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com <3


	8. Pretty Girls and Starting Conversations

Emily stands outside the hotel room, one hand fiddling with her key card while the other hovers in a fist, preparing to knock but not yet making contact with the door. After lunch she had been pulled aside by Dawn, who casually informed her that because Moe and Alex were among the players on the team who had to see the trainer that afternoon, Emily had been paired with Kelley for their post-fitness-torture ice bath, and that she should head to Kelley’s room when she got upstairs. 

“Alex mentioned that you two seemed to have hit it off, so I figured it would be a good pairing,” Dawn had explained. Emily thought she had done a passable job of keeping a neutral look on her face as she had nodded in agreement, not being able to find any words to add to the exchange. 

“Kelley is an experienced player,” Dawn had said. “If you’re looking for someone to learn a thing or two from, she wouldn’t be a bad person to ask.” Then she walked away, more pressing matters on her mind, leaving Emily alone to pull herself together before trailing the rest of the team out of the dining room. 

On her way up in the elevator, Emily had silently cursed the smug look on Alex’s face that morning when she was warning her about ice baths - which Emily now realized, of course, was not about the ice bath at all. She’d dropped her bag in her room and checked the messages on her phone, quickly typing out a reply to something her mom had sent her that morning about how she hoped camp was going well, and then she had run out of things to do. Not willing to admit that she was putting off walking down the hall to Kelley’s room, she grabbed her key, slipped on her sandals, and found herself in front of Kelley’s door a minute later. 

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and finally knocks, gently at first, then harder when there is no response. After a few more seconds the door swings open, and Kelley is standing in front of her. Emily pretends not to notice that she’s already stripped down to her sports bra and spandex shorts, then tells herself it doesn’t matter if she noticed, after all she’s seen her teammates in much less, and that’s what Kelley is - just a teammate. Even so, she keeps her eyes trained on Kelley’s eyes, her self control spurred on by the thought of the level of embarrassment she would have to overcome if she was caught checking Kelley out. Kelley smirks, raising her eyebrows questioningly, reminding Emily that she’s just presented herself on the threshold of Kelley’s room and has not yet offered up an explanation. 

“It looks like we’re ice bath buddies today,” she says, shrugging. Kelley steps to the side, allowing Emily to enter the room. 

“I would say make yourself comfortable, but, you know, ice bath,” Kelley says as she closes the door and leads the way into the bathroom. 

Emily hovers just inside the bathroom door as Kelley uses a bucket to shovel ice from a large cooler into the bath tub. With Kelley’s back to her, Emily lets her eyes wander, taking in the defined muscles of Kelley’s back and shoulders as she moves, the shape of her legs exposed by the tiny pair of shorts she is wearing. She casts her eyes downward as Kelley turns around, and if she noticed Emily checking her out, she doesn’t say anything about it. 

Kelley uses her foot to nudge the mostly empty cooler out of the way, then sweeps her arm out, gesturing to the tub, now partially full of freezing cold water and ice. 

“Let’s get this over with,” Kelley says, stepping into the water, standing for several moments to try to adjust to the temperature before she has to submerge more of her body in it. 

Emily shrugs out of her pullover, then her t-shirt. She hesitates briefly, but steps out of her sweatpants while Kelley is still focused on the sharp cold of the water around her feet. Emily folds her clothes, placing them on the bathroom counter so she’ll have something warm and dry to put on when she can hardly feel her legs in ten minutes. 

By the time Emily steps into the tub, Kelley is seated, submerged in the water up to her waist. She has her phone out, waiting for Emily to join her before starting the timer for both of them. 

“Jesus fuck,” Emily says, lowering herself into the ice cold water. When she looks up, she can tell that Kelley is fighting back an amused smile. 

“What?” she asks, worried that she’s done something wrong, though she can’t possibly imagine what that could be. 

“Nothing,” Kelley says, still trying and failing to keep the smile off her face. 

“Come on,” Emily says. “What’s so funny?” 

“Just you swearing,” Kelley says, shrugging like it’s no big deal. “It doesn’t fit with that innocent little Georgia girl thing you’ve got going on.” 

Emily scoffs. “I do not have an ‘innocent little Georgia girl thing,’” she says, making finger quotes around the words as she repeats them from Kelley. 

“Please,” Kelley’s amused smile turns into a bit of a smirk. “Your whole friend-peer-pressure pick up line thing. And, just, like, your face.” She gestures in the general area of Emily’s face as if to punctuate this last bit. 

“What is wrong with my face?” She wonders if she’s blushing, or if all of the blood in her body is working too hard at making sure her legs don’t freeze off. She thinks her cheeks might feel warm, but that could just be in contrast to the cold of her lower body.  
“Nothing is wrong with it,” Kelley is still smirking, but she shakes her head as she says this, giving Emily the impression that this conversation is about to get worse before it gets better. “It’s cute.” 

“You think I’m cute?” Emily asks, the smirk that’s creeping onto her face a match for Kelley’s. 

“Well you think I’m hot,” Kelley shoots back. 

“I never said that,” Emily says, and she’s pretty sure she’s not lying until Kelley responds. 

“Oh you absolutely did,” Kelley says, and she pauses for a moment, her concentration evident on her face, like she’s trying to remember something that happened ages ago. Emily doesn’t have time to work through this line of thought before Kelley continues. 

“‘My friends won’t let up about how I never talk to hot girls in bars.’” It isn’t exactly what Emily had said, but it’s enough to jog her memory, and whether she had subconsciously blocked the memory or just forgotten, she’s now sure that she had, in fact, called Kelley hot the first time they had met. 

“Yeah, well, that was before I knew you were such a pain in the ass.”

“Ouch. Does this mean you’ll be burning your Kelley O’Hara jersey when you get back to school?” Kelley clutches a hand to her chest, like she’s been wounded by what Emily said. 

“Can we make a pact to never ever talk about the fact that I own your jersey again?” Emily asks, trying to keep any note of pleading out of her voice, as she’s sure that would just encourage Kelley even more. 

“We can try,” Kelley says, after a moment of thought. “But I sort of doubt I’d be able to uphold it. Just being honest here.” 

Emily rolls her eyes. “You’re exactly how everyone thinks you are, aren’t you?” 

Kelley considers this for a moment, and then shrugs. “How do people think I am?”

“Like a big kid,” Emily answers, realizing as she does that this could be construed as offensive and hoping Kelley doesn’t take it that way. She seems to take it in stride, though, and Emily relaxes. 

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Kelley shrugs again, and then glances at her phone. “Almost halfway there,” she says, and Emily is surprised to realize time had been passing relatively quickly. Usually an ice bath seems to drag on forever. Then again, she’s never had an ice bath with Kelley O’Hara before. 

“And what do people think of you?” Kelley asks, bringing Emily back from her thoughts. 

“They have no idea who I am,” she replies. 

“They will,” Kelley says, and Emily thinks she sees a hint of something more serious behind the ever present mischief in Kelley’s eyes. “Just you wait.” Dawn’s voice echoes in Emily’s head, telling her to use Kelley as a resource, as someone who has been through everything she’s about to experience and come out successful. 

“What is that like?” Emily asks. She can tell Kelley is taking the question seriously, because she thinks for several moments before answering. 

“Overwhelming, at times,” she says, pausing again and collecting her thoughts before she continues. “I mean, I’m no Abby Wambach, but people recognize me on the street sometimes. Usually it’s when I’m with the team, but when it happens and it’s just me, it’s always at the exact last moment you’d want it to happen. Like when it’s Saturday morning and you’re wearing sweats and your hair isn’t brushed and all you want is a cup of coffee.” She pauses again, then chuckles under her breath a little as she adds, “Or when you’re on a date and you’re just trying to play it cool.” 

Emily lets her mind wander for just a moment, imagining what Kelley playing it cool on a date looks like. She wonders what kind of a person gets ticked off about a couple of teenage girls asking for a selfie with the girl they’re on a date with, rather than thinking it’s pretty damn cool. 

“Or when you’re waiting for your friends to meet you at a bar and some chick just won’t take no for an answer,” Kelley finishes, dissolving the seriousness of the moment with another joke. 

“Oh, I totally would have taken no for an answer,” Emily says defensively. “If that was the answer you had given. You were totally into me.” She makes it sound casual, like she’s just messing with Kelley the way Kelley had been messing with her. And in a way, she is. Any other intention behind the words is secondary and unimportant. 

“You looked like a baby bird that had just been pushed out the dating nest,” Kelley says, and the metaphor is a little muddled but Emily lets her have it. “I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Plus, you have pretty good taste in beer.” 

She briefly considers taking credit for the beer and thanking Lindsey later, but it only takes her a second to remember that she works with Kelley now, and that if she works her way into the team then working with Kelley could lead to hanging out with Kelley and she does not have the time to learn enough about beer to keep that lie going. And, of course, honesty and all that. 

“I don’t know anything about beer,” Emily admits. “I let Lindsey order for me and then I ask her the names of the ones I like.” Kelley is laughing as she explains, and she wonders how many things she can do to lose Kelley’s interest over the next week. Hypothetically, of course, if Kelley were interested. 

“You do play soccer, right?” Kelley asks, eyeing Emily suspiciously. 

“That part is real,” Emily assures her. “If that part weren’t true I definitely would not have subjected myself to this ice bath.” 

“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Kelley says, and Emily only half believes her, because she glances at her phone as she says it, gauging how much time there is until they can get out and warm up. 

“The ice is fine,” Emily says, and Kelley is looking at her again. Emily holds her eye contact as she says, “The company is shit.” 

And then they’re laughing again, relaxed and amused like they had been the day before in Emily’s hotel room. She tries to ignore the warm feeling in the pit of her stomach, because it’s nice but it’s also a reminder that this isn’t a crush she should have, not something she would want to deal with right now even if she could. She and Kelley had agreed to be friends, and with everything on her plate right now - graduation and the national team and the draft - a friend is exactly what she needs. What she doesn’t need is to complicate that with some silly crush which is, she tells herself, entirely rooted in professional admiration. 

She focuses on that, the professional admiration, as she catches her breath from laughing enough to ask another question. 

“So, how long does it take before this doesn’t feel like a dream you’re going to wake up from?” she asks. She worries for a moment that Kelley is going to laugh at her, but she doesn’t and the smile on her face is genuine. Still, before she can respond, Emily tacks on, “I just mean, does it ever get less nerve wracking and surreal?” 

“In a way it does,” Kelley isn’t looking at Emily as she answers. She’s looking down, her eyes not focused on anything in particular, like she’s remembering something and picturing it in her mind, Emily thinks. “For one thing, you stop thinking of all of the veterans as these otherworldly beings and start thinking of them as just your friends. That doesn’t take long.” This resonates with Emily, as she considers how a few days ago the closest she’d come to any of her teammates was screaming from the stands at a national team game she and Rose had gone to a few years ago, and now she’s training with them, sharing meals, sharing a hotel room with Moe. And, she realizes, thinking of them as her teammates. 

“But there are parts of it that never really get less surreal,” Kelley continues. “The screaming crowds, the reporters, the fact that we are honest to god representing the entire freaking country every time we step foot on the field.” She pauses, looking at Emily now. “You think it might get old someday, but it never really does. Not for me, at least. Not yet.” 

Now all I have to do is stick around long enough to find that out for myself, Emily thinks, and the nerves must show on her face, because Kelley responds as though she’d voiced that thought out loud. 

“You’ll see,” she says. “You’re not going anywhere.” 

And suddenly the alarm on Kelley’s phone is ringing, echoing off the tiled walls of the bathroom. Emily stands up too quickly, feeling the blood rushing out of her head coupled with the relief of the warm air on her nearly numb legs. Kelley is slower to get up, and by the time Emily has regained her bearings, Kelley is handing her a towel. She takes it and leans against the bathroom counter, lifting one leg and rubbing it to try and get the blood flowing before doing the same to the other leg. As she wraps the towel around her waist, folding it over to secure it like a skirt to walk the short distance back to her own room, she looks up to find Kelley looking at her from where she is leaning against the opposite wall. Emily expects her to look away, but she realizes that’s not going to happen as Kelley holds eye contact with her for several seconds, the hint of a smirk visible on the corners of her mouth. 

It’s Emily who breaks eye contact first, turning to collect her clothes and her key card from the counter, and when she turns back around, Kelley is still looking at her. It’s unnerving, but not in the way she would expect it to be. It fits, somehow, with the idea of Kelley she’s slowly forming in her head, bold and mischievous and, if she’s not mistaken, just a little bit flirty. 

“Thanks for sharing your ice with me,” Emily says finally, breaking the silence between them. 

“Want some for the road?” Kelley jokes, nodding toward the cooler. 

“I’d rather not come back from Orlando with frostbite,” Emily says, smiling. “I’m trying to escape the New Jersey winter down here, not recreate the worst parts of it.”

“Fair enough,” Kelley says, and it’s quiet between them, but not uncomfortable. Realizing it’s probably about time for her to vacate Kelley’s bathroom and let her get on with her day, Emily turns to leave. 

“Thanks again,” she says, looking back over her shoulder. “I’ll see you around.” She takes another step toward the door, but stops when she hears Kelley speak up behind her. She turns all the way around, facing Kelley with her whole body as she waits for her to speak. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” is what Kelley says. Emily nods briefly, turns, and finishes her exit from the room. She’s not sure she breathes again until she’s back in her own room, until she’s heard the click of the door locking behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so it turns out I only get inspiration to write when I have a million other things to do. Lucky for you all, school is back in session which means I'm constantly going to have things that require my procrastination. Less lucky for me... 
> 
> As always, I love your feedback and would love to hear from you at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com <3


	9. She Said, For the First Time

The next several days pass in a blur of sweat and muscle aches, grass stains and sunburns, bruised knees and an ill timed ball to the face at one point. There’s hardly time for anything other than training, eating, sleeping, and occasionally recovery, and even if they did have the time, Emily imagines that none of them would be able to find enough energy to do much more than lie in bed. But she doesn’t mind the whirlwind. It means that she spends less time worrying about who to sit with at lunch and more time worrying about getting enough carbs in her body, although if she had a moment to stop and think about it she might even conclude that she’s starting to find her place in both the on and off field order of the team. 

The morning of her tenth day in camp - the last day before a day of travel and a day of rest leading to their first friendly of the year - Emily rolls over and silences her alarm, climbing out of bed and heading for the bathroom. She stops in the doorway to lift her foot behind her, grabbing her ankle and stretching out a hint of tightness in her quad. As she balances with one hand against the doorjamb, her phone begins to ring loudly from where it sits on the bedside table. Moe is still asleep - or trying to be for just a few more minutes - so she grabs the phone quickly and heads for the hallway, being careful not to let the heavy hotel door swing shut and lock behind her. 

It’s Rose’s name that flashes on the caller ID, and she worries for a moment about what reason Rose could have for calling so early, but it’s rang several times now, so she pushes that thought away and hits “Accept” before she misses the call. 

“Rose?” she says, trying to keep her voice low for the benefit of her teammates who are in the process of waking up behind most of the doors lining this hallway. “It’s early. Is everything okay?” 

“Okay?” Rose deadpans, and Emily starts to worry again. “Everything is not okay. Everything is amazing.” 

“Jesus, Rose, don’t scare me like that,” Emily replies, letting out a relieved sigh. 

Rose continues on as if Emily hadn’t said anything. “Do you even check your twitter mentions? Of course you don’t, who am I talking to?”

“Why would you tweet at me when you could just text me?” Emily asks, and she’s getting more and more confused. She’s not an idiot when it comes to social media, and her witty tweets accompanied by badly done photo edits have always been popular in the locker room, but she doesn’t do social media the way Rose does social media. Which is to say, like it’s her job. 

“Not me, you idiot,” and Emily can tell Rose is rolling her eyes even though she can’t see you. “Just every other person in the soccer world.” 

Emily let’s that comment hang because she knows how Rose operates, and the more she tries unsuccessfully to infer the answer the longer it’s going to take for Rose to just tell her. Silence, as she has learned from experience, makes Rose feel like you don’t care enough, and the only way she knows how to make you care more is by giving away the punch line. 

“Portland’s going to pick you in the draft,” Rose says. While Emily takes a moment to let that sink in - Portland is a great team, a great soccer city, and if she can break her way into the lineup she just might be able to make a career out of it - Rose speaks up again. 

“First.” 

It’s a single syllable word, and with the spotty connection of her cell phone in the hotel and the way Rose refuses to ever enunciate, Emily initially has no idea what she’s hearing. It’s like when someone says something to you, and because you were only half listening your reflex is to say “What?”, but by the time the person has repeated themself you realize you actually did hear what they said, you just needed a moment to get it to the processing part of your brain. Maybe it’s because it’s early or maybe because there are so many overwhelming things going on in her life, but Emily doesn’t get to the “What?” fast enough, and then she knows exactly what Rose said without having to ask her to say it again. It turns out she doesn’t have to, because she’s been silent long enough that Rose repeats herself, in a full sentence this time. 

“Portland is going to pick you first in the draft.” Rose speaks slowly, enunciating every word like she’s worried Emily has lost it or gone deaf with the shock or something. “First overall. You’re the number one draft pick.” 

“That’s not possible,” is what Emily says when she’s able to make her mouth move. 

“Please,” Rose says, and her ‘you’re being an idiot’ tone is so familiar that Emily almost forgets this conversation is anything but run of the mill. “You’re training with the national team. Quit acting like you don’t know how good you are.” 

“But first?” Emily asks, and she pushes away the part of her that feels bad making Rose work through this with her. They’ve known each other long enough that Emily knows Rose would smack her for even insinuating that working through Emily’s mental blocks wasn’t part of Rose’s role as her friend and teammate. “A few weeks ago I wasn’t even sure I’d be drafted,” she says, trying to justify her disbelief. 

“A few weeks ago Jill Ellis wasn’t saying things like ‘She’s a really promising young player, and we can’t wait to see what she does’ to the media,” Rose replies. 

“She said that?” 

“You’re so lucky you have me, because frankly your PR skills are appalling,” Rose says, and it’s not the first time Emily has felt comforted by the fact that Rose doesn’t mind being both her friend and the manager Emily couldn’t afford even if she wanted one. 

“I know,” Emily says earnestly. A door opens down the hall and Christen emerges, spotting Emily on her way to the elevator. She looks concerned, so Emily smiles at her, waving her off with a hand gesture she hopes says “Just a phone call. Not a crisis.” It must work because Christen smiles back, and then she’s getting in the elevator and Emily is alone in the hallway again. 

“Thank you for telling me,” she continues. “But it’s not a sure thing, right? Twitter could have it wrong.” 

“True,” Rose says. “But you’re better at disappointment than you are at unexpected success, clearly, so prepare yourself. When it happens don’t do anything stupid like thinking you’re dreaming or thinking that the entirety of women’s professional soccer is conspiring to embarrass you.” 

“I don’t know why I go to anyone but you for advice.” Emily’s tone is sarcastic, but like everything in their friendship, she knows Rose can read her well enough to see that somewhere buried underneath the defense mechanism is a genuine thanks. 

“You’re welcome,” Rose says. They chat for a few minutes longer, only hanging up when Moe sticks her head out the door and reminds Emily what time it is. 

She doesn’t tell anyone what Rose said, she doesn’t know what she’d say even if she wanted to, but some of her teammates must spend more time on social media than she does, because it’s not long before people are talking about it. JJ congratulates her as she jogs by during warm ups, optimistically acting as though it’s already happened. Moe tells her that she earned it, and that it’s an accomplishment no matter when she’s chosen. Kelley quips that, “First is alright, I guess. If you’re into that sort of thing,” and Tobin responds by smacking Kelley with her shin guards. That sets off a whole other chain of events which, luckily, takes the attention off of Emily, for a while at least. 

The draft is four days away, and they have a match to worry about in the meantime. Or, some of them do. There are 24 players at camp and only 18 will suit up for the upcoming friendly. Emily will be fine being in either group she tells her mom, Moe, Lindsey, and herself time and time again as she travels with the team to Houston for the match. 

Of course, all her insistence was for nothing, which she learns when Jill pulls her aside after the team meeting on the eve of the game and tells her she’ll be on the roster. The interaction is short and businesslike, conducted exactly the way she imagines Jill shares this kind of news with players who have been on the team for years and for whom suiting up for one friendly is hardly an achievement. She thanks Jill and tells her she won’t let her down because it feels like the right thing to say in that moment, not because she necessarily believes it, and she manages to keep her ‘excited, but not overwhelmingly so’ face on until she’s back in her room with Moe. 

“So, uh, Jill told me I get to suit up tomorrow,” she says, and her tone is measured even though she’s grinning so hard she worries she’s worries those muscles are going to join the rest of her body in soreness. Moe looks up from her laptop, and she’s smiling, too. In a matter of seconds, Moe has pushed her laptop off to the side and then she’s standing in front of Emily. They hug, briefly, and then find themselves jumping up and down, and Emily is thankful that she has Moe as a roommate, someone who understands her need to be giddy and childlike in this moment, someone who remembers what it’s like to feel that way. 

In the end, Emily gets only a few minutes in the game, but it’s enough. It’s enough to make her a capped player on the national team, and to try to show anyone who is watching that she’s worth it. She feels good about her performance, like she connected passes when she got the ball, she didn’t make it easy on the opposing forwards, and she didn’t make it harder on the other members of the backline. 

When the final whistle blows, she follows her teammates back through the tunnel and into the locker room. Becky throws an arm around her, and before she knows it she’s being surrounded by the whole team. When they finally let her go, Becky makes a big show of presenting her with the game ball, and she sits dutifully on the edge of her locker as the rest of the team comes by one at a time to sign it. 

She doesn’t think she could be any happier. Of course, she’s been wrong before. 

The next day she goes first in the draft. She’s sitting opposite Moe on the floor of their hotel room, both of them recovering in compression boots, when hears her name called through the speakers of Moe’s laptop. It feels surreal, and she’s glad she’s had four days already to let it start to sink in, though four days was hardly enough time to scratch the surface on wrapping her head around the idea. 

Moe is grinning and making her way across the room, scooting across the floor, seemingly unhindered by having to drag her recovery boots with her. She settles with her back against the wall beside Emily, then wraps her arms around her, squeezing her tightly. 

They have another half an hour left in the recovery boots, and they spend it sitting shoulder to shoulder, chatting quietly about things unrelated to the draft. Moe know, Emily reminds herself, what it feels like to be in this position, and Emily is sure she knows what she’s doing as she gives Emily the space to process it, not asking her how she feels or what she thinks, just letting her know that she has someone in her corner. It must be the millionth time since she arrived at camp that she has been so grateful to have Moe as a roommate. It reminds her of being back at school with Rose, and she smiles thinking about a future moment when she’ll get to introduce them. 

As they undo the velcro on their compression boots, Moe brings her thoughts back to the draft, reminding her that she’ll have to make a statement and offering to help her write it. They spend another fifteen minutes doing that, so that by the time she has to leave the hotel room, Emily feels ready to be the first draft pick, ready to be poised and humble, and ready to take the inevitable attention from her team in stride. 

She records the video outside the hotel, thanking the Thorns for choosing her and trying to express how excited she is to play there. It takes a few tries, but she finally comes up with a thirty second recording where she’s not visibly shaking, and where she thinks she sounds natural and genuine, although she’s still reading off a piece of paper that Moe holds beside the camera. 

By the time she’s finished recording, a small group of her teammates has gathered behind the camera. She’s tried not to look at them, knowing the moment she makes eye contact one of them will make a face or a gesture that will have her laughing and having to start the video over once again. As soon as they hear her say, “Yeah, I think that’s good,” all bets are off, and then they’re surrounding her, each of them hugging her and offering a few words of encouragement or congratulations. 

She’s discussing with Moe and someone from the PR team about uploading the video and getting it to the Thorns PR people when Kelley makes her way over from where she’d been hovering on the periphery of the group. 

“Congratulations,” Kelley says, pulling Emily into a hug. She ignores the butterflies in her stomach, attributing them to the thrill of being drafted and choosing not to think about why they chose that moment to appear. 

“It’s a shame, though,” Kelley is smirking as she pulls away and steps back, and Emily braces herself for another joke about Tobin being drafted ahead of Kelley. 

“If you had been slightly less talented you could’ve been back in Jersey. You would’ve been good on my backline.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We noticed that you sort of skated over the details of anything remotely soccer related." It's almost like this story....isn't about the soccer, you know? Also, I'm a soccer fan, not a player. I would rather listen to ANY NWSL play by play person describe a soccer game than listen to me try to do it, and we all know how bad some of those commentators are... 
> 
> I've realized that this fic is going to be long. How long? Who knows. But if I had to guess, we're less than halfway there. All of the chapters so far have taken place in a pretty short time span, but going forward I think it's going to jump around a bit more, because I have an end date in my head and I don't want it to take a million chapters to get there. Just to give you all a little idea of what's to come...
> 
> Please please please tell me you love me in the comments or at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com. It fuels my ego and makes me write faster probably.


	10. From Such Great Heights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Write a chapter that pushes the timeline forward.  
> Also me: Write sappy dialogue. 
> 
> Oops.

If Emily’s first call up felt like the epitome of pressure to prove herself to her coach and her teammates and to herself, really, her second call up takes it to a whole other level. “Camp last month was about showing each other what you can do,” says an email from Jill that comes a week later. “This is about showing the rest of the world what you can do.”

“That’s a little dramatic,” Lindsey says, reading the email over her shoulder in the library, and Emily doesn’t completely disagree, not that she would ever say that to Jill. But it’s olympic qualifiers, by far the biggest stage Emily has ever played on, so the seriousness of the email takes the nerves she’s already feeling in the pit of her stomach and ratchets them up a level, spurred on by the amount of caffeine she’s been drinking to try to find the energy to get caught up in her classes.

In the week she’s been back at school her focus has been entirely on two things: not failing her classes and not getting behind on work outs. She’s in the gym with Rose everyday at 6 AM and sometimes again in the evening, trying to keep a fitness regimen that won’t have her falling behind when she joins the Thorns in a few months. When she’s not at the gym with Rose she’s in class or in the library with Lindsey.

In some ways, it feels so much like it did before that it’s hard to believe that in a few short weeks she became a member of the national team, the first pick in the NWSL draft, and a professional soccer player based in what is quite possibly the biggest soccer city in the country. All she has to show for it is a little more muscle mass and the occasional text from one of her new teammates.

She’s not at all surprised when she gets a text from Moe halfway through reading Jill’s email. She finishes before she picks up her phone and opens the text.

**Moe** : Olympic quals baby  
**Moe** : Your first big tournament. I’m like a proud mama

She laughs and shakes her head as she types out an answer.

**Emily** : I feel like I might puke. Will you still be proud then?

Lindsey is still reading over Emily’s shoulder, looking back and forth between the email still open on her laptop and the texts on her phone.

“Are you still going to remember us little people when you’re a bigshot pro athlete?” she asks, and Emily knows she’s joking, but she puts some reassurance in her answer just in case.

“I’m going to be calling you in a couple years to sleep on your couch when the league folds and my savings run out,” she says, and she’s being dramatic but that doesn’t mean it’s not a serious concern on some level.

“My couch is your couch,” Lindsey replies. “As long as there’s room for your ego on there.” Emily punches her in the shoulder lightly and they both get back to work. A few minutes later her phone buzzes and it’s another text from Moe.

**Moe** : That’s one interpretation of leave it all on the field.

\-----

It’s a week before they have to report, and when Emily gets out of her last class of the afternoon she has three missed calls and a text from Kelley. The text says, “Quit being a responsible student and answer your phone.” They’ve been texting since they’ve been away from the team, in various iterations of team group chats and occasionally one on one, and Emily feels some sort of twist in her stomach at the fact that Kelley has apparently picked up on her schedule. Or, she reasons, she’s picked up on the fact that Emily spends 90% of her time in class or the library, so really it was just a lucky guess.

She closes the text and navigates to her missed calls list to call Kelley back when the phone rings. It’s Kelley, again. Emily hits accept and holds the phone to her ear.

“Yo,” Kelley says before Emily has even had a chance to say hello. “You’re flying out of Jersey next week, right?” She continues, apparently unconcerned that Emily still hasn’t gotten a word in to confirm that she’s listening. “I am, too. I’ve got to get up there to sort some stuff out at my apartment, and, whatever, it’s not important. You want a ride to the airport?”

Emily is slightly taken aback, still not entirely used to the way Kelley can bounce from one topic to another seamlessly, without so much as a breath to collect her thoughts. Emily takes two breaths, one for herself and then another on Kelley’s behalf, before responding.

“Yeah, that would be great, actually.” And it is great because logistically it helps her out, otherwise she’d have to get a cab or a ride from Lindsey again, but it also means that she gets to spend the hours she would normally spend alone and miserable at the airport with Kelley and slightly less miserable, it is still the airport after all. They work out the details and Emily groans at the ungodly early hour she agrees to meet Kelley outside her dorm.

Which is how Emily finds herself, one week later, half asleep and climbing into the car Kelley has rented for the weekend. It’s still dark out, and for a moment the only sound in the car is the radio playing softly before Kelley turns to her, speaking with far more energy than anyone should be allowed to have at this kind of hour.

“I feel like your mom picking you up for soccer practice,” Kelley grins and lifts one eyebrow, her amusement unaffected by the fact that all she gets in return is an indecipherable grunt from Emily, who has slid down in her seat, put her feet up on the dashboard, and pulled her hood up so it shields her eyes from the passing streetlights and headlights as Kelley navigates out of the campus.

“I thought you might be hungry,” Kelley says, and Emily tilts her head, displacing her hood enough to see the plastic cup that Kelley is pulling out of the cupholder and offering to her. She takes it and sips it through the straw, slowly for just a taste at first, and then more quickly once she decides she likes it.

“Should I ask what’s in this?” she pauses to ask.

“She speaks,” Kelley teases, taking her eyes of the road to glance at Emily. “And it’s just, like, peanut butter and bananas and some yogurt. There’s not, like, Dawn Scott hidden veggies in there if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Tastes like cinnamon,” Emily mumbles.

“Yeah, there’s some of that in there, too.”

Conversation flows easily as they drive down the mostly deserted freeway. Kelley asks Emily about her classes and her friends, and Emily asks about Georgia, where Kelley was back visiting her family over the break.

“You already know about Georgia,” Kelley says. “You grew up there.”

“I meant how was your visit,” Emily clarifies, rolling her eyes. “And I know you knew what I meant.”

Soon enough they’re pulling up to the airport. Kelley pulls the car up to the rental return and they hop out, unloading identical roller bags and backpacks from the trunk. It’s a small thing, but having US Soccer issued luggage makes Emily feel like she’s that much more a part of the team, so she’s smiling as she pulls her backpack onto one shoulder and falls into step beside Kelley as they make their way toward the check in desk.

By the time they reach their terminal, there’s still a little over an hour left before their flight boards. Emily isn’t really surprised, considering how early they were both up, but she tries and fails to reconcile this with the Kelley she’d gotten to know at camp last month, who was inevitably one of the last people to show up anywhere.

Kelley excuses herself to use the restroom, and when she returns she’s carrying two Starbucks cups.

“They were just opening when I was walking by and it’s literally too early to be alive,” Kelley says by way of explanation. For the second time since Kelley picked her up that morning, Emily takes a sip of something not knowing what to expect, and she is pleasantly surprised at the sweetness that hits her tongue.

“It’s cheat day.” Kelley grins as she says it, and Emily shakes her head in mock indignation.

“What would Dawn say?” She chastises, but she’s having trouble keeping a smile off her face. “How am I even going to look her in the eye?”

Kelley rolls her eyes. “You’re such a rookie. Just follow my lead. I’ve been lying to Dawn for years.”

“Successfully, apparently,” Emily says. “She told me you were a good role model.”

“She did not say that.”

“She did.” Emily pauses for a sip of her coffee. “The day she told me to ice bath with you. She was all about how wise and experienced you are.”

“I just happen to be experienced in the wisdom of deceiving fitness coaches,” Kelley argues. “And not to brag or anything, but I am one of the fittest people on the team. Maybe I’m onto something.”

“You could write a book.” Emily thinks for a second. “Beating the Beep Test on Caffeine and High Fructose Corn Syrup,” she says, holding her hands out in front of her, playing it up like she’s presenting the idea to a team of publishers.

“Could’ve worked harder on the title,” Kelley teases. “That doesn’t really roll off the tongue.”

“Yeah, well, I still better get half the royalties.”

\-----

They’ve been in the air for ten minutes when Kelley’s eyes start to drift shut. Emily digs her laptop out of her bag and begins work on an essay for her Women in Business course. It’s ironic, studying gender gaps in the workplace when she knows some of her teammates are actually out there trying to do something about it. She loses track of time trying to get as much down on paper as she can, knowing she’ll be pretty distracted from the moment they land, and when she glances over at Kelley she’s looking over Emily’s shoulder, reading what she was working on. She isn’t sure how long Kelley has been watching her work, but she briefly feels insecure wondering about it.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Kelley asks, and Emily realizes she stopped typing some time ago.

“No,” Emily lies.

“What class is this for anyway?” Kelley follows up, and if she was worried about making Emily uncomfortable that worry has passed, because she returns to reading what is visible on the screen, then reaches over to the track pad, scrolling down to catch the end of the last paragraph.

“It’s called Women in Business,” Emily answers. She resists the urge to turn her computer screen to an angle where Kelley can’t see it, and, after a moment of hesitation, pushes it in the other direction instead, which Kelley takes as an invitation to scroll to the top and start reading from the beginning. She pauses after a page and a half and looks at Emily.

“Hope would be really into this,” she says. “Not that I’m not, I mean, it seems really interesting. But Hope would be really really interested.”

Despite training on her backline, Emily hadn’t had much interaction with Hope at her first training camp. She was welcoming and kind, and had some really good tips on the field, but off the field their paths didn’t cross much. Emily knew that Kelley and Hope were close, at least from what fans and the media could tell, and she had seen them spend time together, mostly just the two of them grabbing coffee or heading out for a walk together, but never when Kelley was with the group that Emily had fallen into. Their friendship is separate somehow, Emily had concluded. She had been curious at camp, meaning to ask Moe about it, so she musters up some confidence from somewhere she didn’t know she was keeping it and asks.

“You two are, like, close, right?” is how she phrases it. Kelley’s eyes are still on Emily’s laptop, but there’s no way she didn’t hear her, so Emily waits.

When Kelley makes eye contact with her, her expression is casual enough that Emily stops worrying she’d said something wildly inappropriate.

“Yeah,” Kelley says, shrugging. “When Pia moved me to outside back before the olympics I had no idea what I was doing, and that wasn’t going to fly on Hope’s backline. She spent a lot of her free time teaching me the position, and we just sort of…” She trails off and Emily thinks that might be the end of what she has to say, but after a few moments she fills in, “Clicked.” Emily nods. The explanation fits with what she expected.

“I don’t think anyone saw it coming,” Kelley says after another moment of silence. “We don’t exactly have similar personalities. But maybe that’s why it works.” She shrugs again, and before Emily can react or say anything Kelley has pulled her knees to her chest, curling up in her seat and leaning over to rest her head on Emily’s shoulder. Emily turns her head enough to see that Kelley’s eyes are closed again.

“How am I supposed to type when you’re using me as a pillow?” she mumbles. She ignores the fact that she regrets it immediately, because that would mean acknowledging the fact that having Kelley pressed up against her is making her feel some kind of way, but the regret isn’t necessary anyway.

“Use your other hand, dummy,” Kelley says, the last part of the word “dummy” trailing off into a yawn.

Emily spends the next couple of hours alternating working on her essay and staring out the window, her only two options with her left arm out of commission and her backpack out of reach. She’s jealous of the sleep Kelley is getting, but she’s never been very good at sleeping on planes, anyway, and trying to get comfortable would just mean disturbing Kelley for the slim possibility of getting a few minutes of rest, so she doesn’t bother. Kelley doesn’t stir until they touch down on the runway, jolting upright with the impact of the wheels on the tarmac.

“I think you drooled on my arm,” Emily says, leaning over to dig her cellphone out of her backpack without dislodging it from under the seat in front of her.

“You’re such a liar,” Kelley replies, rubbing her hand along the sleeve of Emily’s sweatshirt to confirm her point. “Several people have told me I am adorable when I’m sleeping.” Emily thinks she might be blushing, which is ridiculous because Kelley could easily be talking about teammates she’s roomed with. Plus, they’re not in middle school there’s no reason Emily should be heating up at the thought of Kelley sharing a bed with someone.

At baggage claim they meet up with Alex, Ali, and Ashlyn, and they all hug and exchange pleasantries as they wait for their bags. Ash pushes her way through the crowd, designating herself to grab each of their bags as they come in off the conveyor belt. Ali hovers just behind her, leaving Kelley, Alex, and Emily standing together on the periphery.

“I didn’t know you two were flying in together,” Alex says, and from her tone Emily is pretty sure she just finished putting the pieces together, and that, for some reason, she’s at least vaguely amused.

“I told you I had to put some of my stuff in storage,” Kelley replies. Her tone is casual, but she’s not looking at Alex as she says it. Emily glances back and forth between them, curious but not interested in getting involved.

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” Alex says, but the look on her face says she’s 100% sure, which must be nice, Emily thinks, because Emily herself is exactly 0% sure what’s going on.

“It was kind of last minute. It must have just slipped my mind.”

“No biggie.” Alex shrugs and it’s convincing enough, but somehow Emily doesn’t believe her. Before she can give it anymore thought, Ash is calling to them to come get their bags and then all five of them are out the door and into the van, the topic of conversation moving on to their upcoming matches and the associated nerves and excitement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stylistically this chapter feels a little different from the ones before it. I don’t actually write a lot so I don’t actually have a super developed ~style~ so in this one I felt like trying out more scene breaks and text messaging and so I went for it because why not. Hopefully that doesn’t bother you and if it does…..eh.
> 
> I love you all for continuing to read this :) You know the drill. sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com


	11. Let Me Down Gently

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been so long and I am so sorry and you all have been so patient and I am rewarding you with this: the longest chapter of this story so far, not at all on purpose, but a lot of things happened and it got away from me and hopefully it was worth the wait.

There’s confetti and shouting, teammates are hugging her and each other, and she can feel the medal hanging heavy against the back of her neck. Emily remembers briefly that for a lot of her teammates a CONCACAF championship title is nothing compared to what they’ve accomplished in the past, but to her, at this point in her career, it’s everything, and even the most seasoned veterans on the roster are celebrating enough to feed into her excitement, enough to tell her that even after years of this they still remember how it feels, in some ways they still feel it.

Emily hadn’t played much, a match in the group stage and a few minutes against Canada in the final, but there will be time for her to be disappointed about that later. She’ll have long hours in the gym and on the practice field over the next few months to ruminate on how she could have been better in the moments she was on the field, and how she could have proven herself in practice to earn more of that time. Right now, though, those minutes feel like enough, and even the time she spent on the bench feels like an accomplishment when it lead to this.

She’s swept into a hug by Sam, who has been her roommate for the week and whose excitement parallels Emily’s. They stand together for several moments, just shaking their heads, sharing the experience of overwhelming joy between them, not speaking, just giving each other time to process. Other teammates walk by, some stopping to pat them on the back or the shoulder or offer a few words of congratulations. Ashlyn drops confetti into Emily’s hair, then mimes being unable to reach to do the same to Sam, so they’re both laughing when Kelley jogs by and gives them each a smack on the ass, turning to jog backward and shout, “You earned that, rookies,” before continuing on toward the locker room.

They make their way in that direction eventually, and the energy from the field carries into the locker room in a way she can never remember feeling before. Sure, her teammates are all at various stages of changing from their kits back into leggings and t-shirts that aren’t drenched in sweat, the way they would be after any match, but they’re also laughing and shouting and dancing to whatever is blasting from the speakers on the bench in the middle of the room.

And afterward, of course, they celebrate.

Back at the hotel, every door in the hallway is propped open, everyone flowing freely into and out of teammates rooms for outfit advice and alcohol, though Emily has no idea where the alcohol is actually coming from when a plastic cup half full of champagne is handed to her in the doorway of Moe and Kling’s room.

Eventually they all make their way downstairs, saying goodbye to Mallory at the elevator and promising not to have too much fun without her. There’s a row of cabs by the door, another thing which makes Emily wonder who is the mastermind behind the organization of this night, and she piles into one with Sam, Moe, JJ, and Crystal. Crystal talks the driver into turning up the radio, and by the time they’ve reached the club they’re all flushed and giggling from dancing and singing along.

In the club, more drinks are passed around, and then they’re on the dance floor. Emily knows she’s not a great dancer, but what she lacks in skill she makes up for in confidence, copying Crystal’s moves and throwing in some of her own with a fervor that would fool strangers into thinking she thinks she’s hot shit. As it is, she’s surrounded by her teammates who are doubled over laughing until she fades into the middle of the group, taking it down a notch and just doing her best to move to the beat of the music.

She has no idea how much time has passed before she is sweaty, her breathing heavy, and she feels like she needs some air. Not some air, really, just some space. She catches Moe’s eye and nods toward the wall, trying to communicate that she’s just going to sit down for a while, and Moe seems to get the message, because she smiles and flashes her a thumbs up, before going back to focusing on dancing with some teammates.

She makes her way off the dance floor and toward a group of booths off to the side, where they’d thrown coats and hats and handbags when they’d come in on their way to the dance floor. She slides into the last booth in the corner because she thinks it’s the one she left her purse in. It takes a minute or two, but eventually she digs it out from the bottom of the pile of her teammates belongings. Her phone is buzzing as she takes it out, just one of many congratulatory texts, emails, and facebook messages she’d gotten since the game ended that night. Taking a moment to scroll through them, she finds a message from Rose and Lindsey and types out a quick reply. It’s the only reply she gets to, before she sees someone approaching out of the corner of her eye. She looks up and Kelley is standing over the table, a drink in each hand.

“Scoot over,” Kelley says, and before Emily has the chance to react, Kelley is sitting next to her. She puts both drinks on the table, pushing one over so it’s directly in front of Emily, then turns so her back is to Emily, her legs swung around to the outside of the booth.

“These things are killing me,” Kelley looks over her shoulder to explain, and then she’s tugging her shoes off and throwing them on the table. Now totally barefoot, she swings back around, letting her head fall against the booth behind her and exhaling deeply.

“It’s times like these that I totally get Tobin’s whole no shoes thing,” she says as she turns her attention to Emily, who assumes Kelley can see on her face exactly how she’s feeling: confused, overwhelmed, and just a little bit amused. They hold eye contact for a moment as the thumping bass of one techno song fades into the high pitched synth of another. Slowly, Kelley’s face breaks into a grin, and suddenly they’re both laughing, though whether it was at Kelley’s shoe debacle or just a manifestation of the general good mood of the night Emily could not say.

“Have you been drinking?” Kelley says, her tone mockingly suspicious, and ‘a little bit drunk’ jumps to the top of Emily’s list of reasons she feels so good right now.

“Not as much as you have,” she shoots back, and they’re laughing again.

“Well then get on my level, loser.” Kelley pushes the drink in front of Emily closer to the edge of the table. “I owed you a drink anyway.”

Emily is confused, for a moment, before she remembers the last time they were sitting beside each other in a bar.

“I thought I, like, owed you my firstborn for you accepting the drink,” Emily argues, and Kelley shrugs.

“That was before I knew how sweet you were,” she says, and she might have been serious if she hadn’t followed it up with, “Can’t take advantage of baby rookies, now can I?” Emily rolls her eyes, but accepts the drink, taking a long sip through the straw, and waiting to see what Kelley’s next move it.

“What a week, dude,” is what she eventually says. “The Olympics. Can you believe?”

It’s loud, with the music playing, but Kelley isn’t deterred, so Emily listens to her talk about the game for a while as though they weren’t both there. She does play by play of some of the big moments the way she remembers them, then moves on to the goal she had scored a few games back. Emily indulges her because she knows that if she ever scored a goal in any match at all she’d never be able to shut up about it, and because she likes the way Kelley lights up as she relives the moment.

Emily drains the last sip of her drink, becoming conscious of the fact that she’s starting to feel it as she does. Between the hotel room getting ready, the Uber over here, and then the club, she’s had a not unsubstantial amount to drink over the last few hours. Kelley lets her commentary trail off, and in the lull in conversation Emily lets her mind wander, lets the thoughts she might normally try to repress come to the front, urged on by the alcohol in her blood.

“Why were you in Jersey the weekend before camp?” She only half realizes she’d said it out loud, but she must have, because Kelley is looking at her, and then answering the question.

“I told you, I had to move some stuff out of my old apartment.”

“Is that the truth, thought?”

Kelley opens her mouth to answer back immediately, and then stops. Her eyes widen and it looks like she’s having a realization of some sort. She sips her drink slowly through the straw, but Emily can see that she’s smiling, a tiny upturn of one side of her mouth and a sparkle in her eyes that isn’t unfamiliar. It’s a look Emily recognizes, even slightly inebriated, one that she has come to realize means there’s something going on she doesn’t know about, and there’s probably a 50/50 chance she’d even want to know. In this moment, though, the odds mean nothing, she needs to know. She doesn’t have to tell Kelley that before Kelley is speaking again.

“You’re asking the wrong question.” It’s not an explanation, but it’s the beginning of something, and she knows it means that Kelley is going to tell her, it’s only a matter of time. So she waits, her eyes locked on Kelley’s, waiting for her to continue.

“You should be asking why I didn’t tell Alex. I wasn’t lying to you about needing to be in Jersey. I needed to move some stuff out of my apartment. I didn’t tell Alex because I knew she’d never let me hear the end of it.”

“Because you’re moving out of your apartment?”

“Because I timed it so I’d be flying back with you.”

It’s a lot. It’s not, really, it’s pretty simple if she lets herself believe the explanation that her brain comes up with, that Alex is Kelley’s best friend so teasing her about having a crush on the rookie that hit on her in a bar one time is normal and doesn’t necessarily reflect on how Kelley feels about Emily. That it makes sense that Kelley would rather fly from New Jersey with Emily than from Georgia by herself. Of course, she wouldn’t have been flying by herself because Moe flies out of Atlanta, too. It’s possible she was just being nice. Since she had to be in New Jersey anyway, maybe she felt bad that Emily was new to the team and was flying alone. She was just trying to be a good friend.

Or maybe not. Kelley is looking at her like she’s waiting for a reaction, so Emily tries to put her thoughts together into something that doesn’t sound completely stupid.

“She’s really never going to let me live that down, is she?” Emily says, not so much deciding what stance she’s going to take so much as listening to what comes out her mouth and running with that.

Kelley’s brow furrows in confusion for a moment, smoothing out as she catches on to what Emily is saying. She looks relieved, Emily thinks, and she wonders if it’s because this is the closest either of them has come to admitting there could be something going on since the first time they talked in Emily’s hotel room, and Emily’s just given her an out if she wants to take it and write this whole thing off as something going on inside Alex’s head.

“Alex never lets anyone live anything down,” Kelley says, and she’s going with the joke, but something in her voice is too serious to believe that her heart is really in it. “But she eventually gets bored if you stop giving her new reasons to believe it’s true.”

So, they’re doing this. They’re in in a club, the music is deafening, and their friends will probably be coming after them to drag them back onto the dancefloor any moment now, but they’re doing this.

“Are there reasons?” She leans in close to Kelley as she says it, because it feels inappropriate to be having this conversation at the volume they would need to be to maintain several inches of space between them. “Other than the flight, thing. Because it was just good timing. It doesn’t have to mean anything.” She can’t fully explain why she’s still giving Kelley a chance to deny it, but she’s doing it anyway. It’s not really her personality to be so confrontational, and the blow is softened by the excuses she’s offering, but she knows she doesn’t want Kelley to take them.

“It does, though,” Kelley says, and Emily wishes they were having this conversation somewhere else because Kelley is both leaning in, her lips directly beside Emily’s ear, and shouting to be heard over the music, and it’s making it nearly impossible to interpret the tone of the conversation when she can’t see Kelley’s face, can barely hear her words let alone any sort of inflection.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything, but it does,” Kelley clarifies, and Emily leans back, taking a look at Kelley’s expression and using her own face, rather than her voice, to try to confer that she has no idea where Kelley is going with this. Kelley looks like she might speak again, might try to have a conversation from a normal, friendly distance, but decides against it and leans in again, pulling Emily to meet her halfway.

“I like you,” she says, and Emily doesn’t know if it’s the words or the feeling of Kelley’s breath warm against her ear, but she feels shivers down her spine. “I’ve liked you since you were cute and awkward and you used what is literally the worst pickup line I’ve ever heard, let alone the fact that it was completely true.

“And I think you like me, too, judging by the fact that I barely have to work that hard to get you blush. Like, seriously, it’s almost too easy. And that’s nice, you know, the flirting, it makes you feel good. But we work together, and I don’t want things to get complicated. Especially for you. You’re brand new to the team, that should be where all our energy is right now. I don’t want to do anything to distract from that.”

Emily’s first instinct is to argue that she can decide for herself where her energy should and shouldn’t be used, thank you very much, but she knows Kelley is right, that she’s looking out for Emily’s best interest, so she doesn’t fight it.

“What we have right now,” Kelley continues, “is good. Can we keep that or are things going to get royally fucking awkward now that we’ve addressed the elephant in the room?”

Emily laughs, in spite of herself and in spite of how tense she feels, and that’s how she knows things are going to be okay. She leans back and Kelley is smiling at her. It’s the same smile she’s always got on her face when she’s said something charming as hell, and if it weren’t Kelley, Emily would be having a really hard time believing that someone was both flirting with her and rejecting her at the same time. With Kelley, it’s just typical.

Emily shakes her head and shouts “No awkwardness!”, and she thinks Kelley hears her over the music because she is nodding emphatically. Kelley puts her hand out and they shake on it, dead serious for a moment but laughing again once their hands are apart.

There’s a shout from over by the bar that catches both of their attention. They turn their heads to see Kling, standing on the bar, a shot glass in hand. It’s hard to see from where they’re sitting, but she thinks most of the rest of their teammates are gathered around her at floor level. It’s either a miracle or a curse that Kling catches sight of Emily and Kelley from where she’s standing, and it’s only because there’s a lull as the song changes that she can get her voice loud enough for them to hear her.

“Yo, Georgia Peaches,” she shouts, the alcohol making her words run together a bit, but she’s surprisingly coherent for Kling at this time of night. “Get your skinny asses over here.”

Emily rolls her eyes and looks at Kelley for her reaction. Kelley is smiling, but who wouldn’t be at the scene Kling is making. Emily isn’t sure whether the conversation they were having would have been finished if they hadn’t been interrupted, but the moment is over now, and by the way Kelley is reaching over the table to grab her shoes, they’re not going to be alone much longer.

“Shoes are not required,” Kling shouts, watching Kelley struggle to slide one foot back into a shoe under the table. Kling disappears from sight for a moment, leaning or crouching down to be more at eye level with the people standing on the ground, and when she straightens back up she’s shouting again, trying to make herself heard over the music which has picked up volume again.

“Bartender says shoes are required, so get them back on or we’re doing this without you.”

Kelley lifts one hand and flips Kling off, earning a cheer from their teammates by the bar, her other hand still struggling to fit the strap of her shoe over her heel. She gets it, eventually, then slides out of the booth and turns to wait for Emily to follow her. There’s a bit of a grimace on Kelley’s face, and she’s shifting her weight between her feet, clearly still in some amount of pain from her time spent dancing earlier.

“I could give you a piggyback,” Emily offers. Kelley appears to consider it for a moment, then shakes her head. They walk toward the bar, but Kelley stops a few feet away from where the nearest of their teammates is standing.

“We good?” she asks. Despite the slightly unsatisfied feeling in the pit of her stomach, Emily nods.

“Of course,” she answers, and only after she’s said it does she realize that she actually means it.

What exactly Kling is doing is insisting everyone take a shot for either celebrating the victory or team bonding, it’s not exactly clear. Emily and Kelley each take one, and they tap the rims of their glasses together before throwing the shots back. Everyone cheers, and then again when Kling does another, insisting it would be wrong not to do an extra for “poor Mal, all alone in the hotel.” The empty shot glasses are collected in a stack on the bar, and the whole team is back out on the dance floor, enjoying the time they have left in each other’s company.

\--------

They trickle out of the club around 2:00, the majority of the team huddling together on the sidewalk, the group becoming smaller by four or six people every few minutes when an Uber arrives. Emily finds herself sliding into the back of a car beside Kelley. That wasn’t by design, she argues in her head, but it’s futile because she’s sure she’s the only one thinking it and she knows she’s lying anyway.

Kelley kicks her shoes off again the moment the car starts moving, then slides down in her seat and rests her head on Emily’s shoulder. She’s had quite a bit more to drink, since they were dragged away from their moment of solitude at the club, but there’s also something different between them since they talked. Kelley lets her hand trail lightly back and forth along Emily’s knee as she starts to slide between fully awake and half asleep.

Emily does give Kelley a piggyback when they get back to the hotel, taking her shoes from her and bending down beside the car so Kelley can climb on, her bare feet trying to get some traction against Emily’s waist to secure herself. She doesn’t move to get down even when they’ve reached the elevator, so Emily takes her all the way to the door of her hotel room. The door is slightly ajar, Christen, her roommate, having left the club a few minutes ahead of them. Emily imagines that if the door were locked, she would wait while Kelley dug through her purse for her key card. Even without that excuse, they hover for a moment outside the door. Emily glances around, at the floor, over Kelley’s shoulder, watching the elevator, waiting for it to open and for more of their teammates to spill out.

She finally looks at Kelley, and they lock eyes, and she’s unnerved, as she always is, thinking about Kelley looking at her, unabashedly, just waiting for her to look back. Kelley reaches out, putting a hand on Emily’s arm to steady herself before leaning in and kissing her softly on the cheek.

It’s nothing more or less than she would expect from any of her close friends, especially when they’re exhausted and slightly drunk after a night out, but at the same time it feels intimate, even in the cheap fluorescent lighting of the hotel hallway.

When they’re eye to eye again, Emily thinks she can see a tiny bit of a blush creeping across Kelley’s cheeks, although it could just be a flush from the alcohol that she hadn’t noticed earlier. Kelley lets her hand rest on Emily’s arm for a few moments longer, and when she takes it away Emily ignores the part of her that wishes she hadn’t.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” Kelley says quietly, her voice rough from the amount of shouting she’d been doing in the club all night. “Night Emily.”

“Night Kelley.”

And then she’s alone in the hallway. She hears the sound of the elevator door opening, and remembers to make her way back to her own room. Sam is already in bed with the lights off when Emily opens the door, so she tries to make as little noise as possible as she quickly runs through the abridged 2 AM version of her pre-bed routine. She expects to fall asleep as soon as her head hits the pillow after such a long day, but she drifts off slowly, letting her mind wander through bits and pieces of the last 24 hours. The last thing she thinks about is how Kelley’s lips felt against her cheek, and she has a brief vibrantly clear thought of “what the fuck am I doing” just before she’s sound asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me. I know updates don't come often, but I hope you'll believe me when I say that they will come eventually. I've got a plan now for the next few chapters, so fingers crossed I'll find some time to write them. 
> 
> Let me know what you like about this chapter in the comments or anytime at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com <3


	12. How Time Flies By

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!

Someday, when she looks back on the spring of her senior year of college, Emily will wonder how many other people can say that they spent their last few months as a college student on the opposite side of the country from where they were supposed to be attending college. When she’s not with the national team, she continues to attend classes until March, and then, when her friends are packing for spring break trips and visits to grad schools, she quietly packs everything in her dorm room into boxes and moves across the country to start her career.

She stays with Rose and Lindsey the night before she flies out. Her room is empty anyway, only one suitcase and a backpack left that will board her flight with her the next day, and she uses that as an excuse to crash at their place, as though she would need an excuse. Both Rose and Lindsey see right through her, but they don’t say anything, because they’re just as happy to have one last night together, the three of them as college classmates for the last time.

They order a pizza like they always do, eat it on the sofa like they always do, then settle into Lindsey’s queen sized bed, shoulder to shoulder. Rose flicks through Netflix with the tv remote, settling on some romantic comedy they’ve all seen before, and they alternate watching the movie and being overly nostalgic about the years they’ve been friends.

“Remember when we left you at a diner after an away game,” Rose says, grinning at Emily, setting off an argument about whose fault it was that the bus had left without her.

“My fault?” Lindsey asks, when they get through all of their teammates and finally get around to blaming her, their reasoning becoming more and more ridiculous by the second. “How can it be my fault? I was, like, three states away. I’m not even on the team.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t been so royally awful that one season your parents forced you to play youth soccer you could have ended up on the team and then there would have been someone around to look after my best interests,” Emily argues.

“Maybe if you had been worse at soccer you wouldn’t have ended up on a team that forgot you existed in rural Indiana,” Lindsey says.

“Touche,” Emily concedes. “Oh my god what if I get lost in Oregon.”

“Maybe they’ll have the courtesy to lose you at an away game against Sky Blue. Drop a pin and we’ll pick you up,” Rose deadpans. They laugh, making up more and more ridiculous scenarios of Emily getting lost from the team bus. Eventually, their ideas run out and they lapse back into silence, their eyes on the movie again.

Emily’s phone buzzes halfway through the movie, and Lindsey reaches over to grab it off the coffee table, stopping to read the name on the screen before handing it over. Emily makes a face, trying to communicate her displeasure with her best friend’s nosiness, and Lindsey just shrugs, her face saying ‘as if you wouldn’t have done the same thing.’

“What’s going on with you two?” Lindsey asks, and Emily realizes she hadn’t even looked to see who it was. She illuminates the screen and sees ‘Kelley’ at the top of the notification. She shrugs and turns the screen away from Lindsey to open the text. Of course, Rose is leaning against her other side, so she reads the message over Emily’s shoulder as soon as Emily has opened it.

 **Kelley:** Safe travels tomorrow. Can’t wait to see you tear up Providence Park. And obviously I can’t wait to kick your ass on the field in a couple months ;)

“There’s a winking face in it, so it must be getting serious,” Rose reports to Lindsey, who tries to grab the phone from Emily to see for herself. Emily manages to dodge her, and she locks the phone and holds it straight up in the air.

“Enough,” she says, trying to hold back her laughter and sound stern. “This is my last night here and you two are going to spend it prying into my personal life?”

“It’s our last chance to do it,” Rose says, pouting, and it catches Emily off guard how this statement hits her, suddenly making her hyperaware of how different her life is about to become. She keeps that inside, wanting to keep the atmosphere of the night light, not melodramatic.

“I’m not dying,” Emily says. “I’m just moving to Portland. You guys are coming to visit me after finals, anyway, that’s only a few months away.”

“And then both of you are leaving me,” Rose says, the attention shifting from Emily’s departure to Lindsey’s graduation at the end of the year.

“It’s not our fault you were born a year late,” Lindsey says, shrugging. “And I’ve got zero idea what I’m doing after graduation so chances are I’ll be back here on your couch by the fall.”

“As long as you pay rent,” Rose says, and all three of them are giggling, but it falls a little flat with as the weight of the situation settles and they each quietly consider what life will be like without the other two around constantly.

The conversation fades again and when Emily thinks Rose and Lindsey’s attention is off of her and back on the TV, she unlocks her phone, quickly rereading Kelley’s text and sending back a series of short messages in response:

 **Emily:** Thanks  
**Emily:** :)  
**Emily:** Not if I kick yours first ;)

She realizes that she had misjudged before she even looks up from her phone. She can see in her peripheral vision that Rose and Lindsey are both leaning in, watching her as she hits send on the third message. She doesn’t look at either of them, keeping her eyes forward and intently on the movie as she pretends she hasn’t noticed their stares. She can’t pretend for long, though, as neither of them budge and she eventually loses her nerve.

“We’re just friends,” she says, and despite the fact that the words are true, Emily knows she wouldn’t be convinced, and Rose and Lindsey certainly aren’t.

“Two winky faces?” Rose says suspiciously.

“One of them was a regular smiley.”

“That is not the argument I would have gone with.” Lindsey’s voice is gentle, and even though Emily knows that what is coming is the patented Lavelle-Horan good cop/bad cop routine where Lindsey pretends to be on her side to get her to open up - a routine they perfected sophomore year and have used on everyone from Rose’s mom to Emily’s Economics professor - she feels herself relax. There is something vaguely comforting about your two best friends prying information out of you the same way they always have.

“She’s just a friend,” Emily tries to assert, but she sounds even less convincing this time.

“But like, a really really good friend?” Rose pushes.

“A teammate,” Emily answers simply.

“Right, and aren’t there like rules about dating your teammates?” Lindsey asks.

“There probably are,” Emily says, just as Rose says, “There aren’t.”

“And either way I wouldn’t know, because I am not dating any of my teammates,” Emily continues.

“But you would,” Rose prompts.

“Obviously she would,” Lindsey says. “I mean, look at her.” Normally that would have made Rose laugh, but she’s determined.

“I’m being serious,” Rose says, turning her focus away from Lindsey and toward Emily. “No teasing. No cheap shots. As your best friend in the whole entire world -” she can hear Lindsey scoff beside her at this “- Your best friends in the entire world, you can tell us if she broke your heart.”

“Jesus, Rose.” Emily can’t explain why she has been so resistant to talking to her friends about her relationship with Kelley, but if she tried it would probably have something to do with the fact that she doesn’t know how to put it into words without admitting to herself that it’s more complicated than she’s tried to make herself believe.

“She didn’t break my heart. I hit on her, once, because you idiots told me to do it. We talked about it, and we agreed it was funny and flattering that we flirted with each other, but that we were better off as friends, for ourselves and for the team’s sake.” There’s silence and no one but her conscience is accusing her of anything, but for some reason she doesn’t just leave it at that.

“She told me she liked me after we qualified for the olympics. We were drunk, and she said it, but we agreed that it was more important to focus on our careers. We’d be stupid to let a little crush get in the way of that.”

Rose and Lindsey are silent for a few moments before Lindsey speaks up.

“And how are you feeling now?”

“I feel like I want to be the best center back for the Portland Thorns I can possibly be, and everything else can wait until I’ve figured out how to be that.”

“Good,” Rose says, holding her fist up to bump it against Emily’s. “Show up in Portland tomorrow like that and the rest of the league won’t know what hit them.”

\-------

The next few months are what she only knows how to describe as a whirlwind. She’s playing some of the best soccer of her life in Portland and any one of the other nine NWSL host cities when they’re on the road. It doesn’t take more than a few games before she’s cemented herself as a part of the starting lineup for the Thorns, and it feels good to be a part of a backline that is part of the reason they’re sitting high in the standings the first month of the season.

She was nervous, reporting to Providence Park for the first time, but not the way she had been with the national team. They opened the first week of preseason training with a team meeting where she sat beside Tobin, who had patted her on the back and said “this season is gonna be great,” and Emily believed her. Whether it was the familiar faces or the fact that she kicked off the season playing just about as well as she could have hoped, the transition was smooth, and about a month into the season she realizes Portland has started to feel like home.

The only time she feels something like homesickness for college, and more specifically her friends, she’s at an early morning practice, sitting on the grass by the sideline stretching and chatting with Kling. Her phone is lying in the grass beside her, and when it buzzes she picks it up to find a snapchat from Rose. It’s a selfie of her and Lindsey, Lindsey dressed in a graduation cap and gown with Rose beside her, pointing at the cap with a massive smile on her face. Emily replays it, taking a screenshot, then shows Kling.

“I haven’t thought about it much,” Emily admits to her, “but it’s going to be kind of weird to not be there.”

“Is your graduation supposed to be this weekend?” Kling asks, and Emily nods.

“Dude that is such a bummer.” Since moving to Portland, Kling has been anything from a big sister to a partner in crime to Emily, so she appreciates the blunt response, as well as what comes next.

“You deserve all that pomp and circumstance crap after surviving four years of college,” she says. “But honestly? You’re not missing much. All I remember from my graduation was how sweaty I was in that robe and how boring all the speakers were.” She knows Kling is downplaying it at least a little, but it still makes her feel better. After a few more moments one of the coaches blows a whistle, and they’re both off running.

She thinks about graduation off and on over the next couple of days, but it’s the farthest thing from her mind when Mark stops her outside the locker room and asks if they can talk. For her entire soccer career, despite knowing that a coach wanting to talk to you can be either a good or a bad thing, and priding herself on being able to take constructive criticism, being pulled aside by a coach has never stopped making her heart race. She agrees, and he leads her to the conference room, asking about how she’s been adjusting to living in Portland, and giving her the name of a bakery he likes near where her apartment is. She knows he’s stalling, and she’s ready to politely ask him to get to the point when he pushes open the conference room door to reveal the entire team, seated in rows of chairs and turned over their shoulders grinning at her.

Her first instinct is to run. She looks over her shoulder, either for an explanation or a getaway route she’s not sure, and finds Mark also smiling at her. It’s then that “Pomp and Circumstance” begins to play out of someone’s tiny bluetooth speakers held up in the crowd, and Tobin approaches her, holding open a graduation gown. As she starts to realize what is actually going on, she relaxes, and the tension in her shoulders is replaced by a blush spreading over her cheeks. Finally, she smiles, as she moves so that Tobin can slip the gown over her arms, someone else dropping a graduation cap on her head from behind her. At Tobin’s urging, she turns and walks down the aisle between the rows of chairs. Her teammates are clapping, and she gives each of them a wave or a high five, laughing at how ridiculous she must look.

At the front of the room, is Kling. Dressed in her Thorns sweatsuit, plus a necktie, which Emily can only imagine is an attempt to make herself look more scholarly.

“A round of applause for our recent grads,” she says, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice over the fact that this is a graduation of one and not one thousand like she seems to be pretending. That sets Emily off giggling, which continues as Kling makes a speech comprised mostly of horrible graduation cliches and through Mark’s attempt at a sincere speech about her accomplishments and personal attributes. She resists as they try to push her up to the podium, but finally relents.

“It’s been a great four years,” she jokes, looking around at her teammates who she’s only known for a matter of months. “Um, here is my diploma,” she says, some genuine pride in her voice as she holds up the certificate she’s pretty sure Kling got off the internet so they can all see.

“This is proof,” she says, trying and failing of thinking of more to say. Instead, she keeps it short and sweet. “Thank you all, and let’s clap me out. Ready, go.” Her teammates applaud as she tosses her cap into the crowd at the suggestion of someone in the back row, then retreats back down the aisle, having had just about enough of being in the spotlight.

She sticks around to get some photos to send to her family, and Lindsey and Rose, smiling beside each of her teammates as they ask for a photo with “the graduate.” Someone gets a photo of Kling pretending to hand her the diploma, and she adds it to her snapchat story, selecting Rose and Lindsey to send it directly to, then going back and adding Kelley to the list of recipients.

As she makes her way to the parking lot with a few of the girls later, she checks her replies. There’s a chat reply from Rose, which consists of three rows of the “laughing so hard you’re crying” emoji, followed by a single emoji of a graduation cap.

The only other response is from Kelley. Emily taps on it and waits while it loads. When it’s ready she taps again, and she’s looking at a selfie of Kelley. She’s wearing a workout tank and her hair is damp with sweat, her cheeks slightly red like she’s just stepped off the field. Emily does her best to pretend that doesn’t do anything to her, and instead focuses on the caption, which says, “brains and beauty? damn girl.”

She rolls her eyes and sends back a selfie from the car, captioning it “takes one to know one” before slipping her phone in her bag and jumping back into the spirited conversation her teammates are having around her.

\-------

When she’s not with Portland, she’s with the national team, and it’s bittersweet because being on the practice field with the best players in the world doesn’t just make her a better player, it makes her happier and more confident, and at some point, she realizes later, she stops thinking of call ups as some stressful test she can fail at a moment’s notice and starts thinking of them as a routine part of her life. It’s not that she takes it for granted, it’s just that she’s not constantly imagining that each camp is her last, and that boost in self assurance starts to reflect in her performance.

Her performance for her club and on the practice field, that is, because the one thing she can’t seem to make inevitable is actually getting on the field with the national team. She sits on the bench through a series of friendlies over the course of the spring, accompanied by rotating members of the team, though never many of the same people, she notices.

In June, the national team plays Japan. The locker room is full of a nervous energy, largely because every person in there knows that this is their last real chance to make a case for their spot on the olympic roster. They tie the first match, which is why the locker room after a victorious second match feels more like a major tournament victory than it does a friendly which, in the grand scheme of things that aren’t pride and proving themselves, means almost nothing.

Emily sits tucked into her locker after the game, as her teammates, in various states of undress, dance and laugh and celebrate around her. She’s wearing number 15 while Pinoe is still out rehabbing her ACL, so when she looks up from her locker she makes eye contact with Kelley across the room. She knows she’s probably projecting some sense of pathetic or self deprecating into that brief, wordless exchange, but whatever Kelley sees in her eyes, she gets up and crosses the room.

Kelley is still in her cleats and socks, so once she’s in front of Emily she takes a seat on the floor and starts to untie her laces, easing off both of her cleats and her socks before she says anything.

“The hardest part of the beginning of my career,” she says, “was feeling happy for the team while I felt miserable for my own career.” Emily opens her mouth to protest, but closes it before any words come out. It’s true. Here she is, sitting on her own, being melancholy when she should be happy. They won, after all. That’s what should be important. Kelley is still sitting in front of her, her eyes fixed on Emily in the way that she has come to find addictive when she’s in a good mood, but it feels suffocating in her current, self-loathing state.

“Hold on to that feeling,” Kelley says, and Emily finds herself nodding even as she’s wishing, for once, that Kelley would just leave her alone.

“Being angry you’re not out there? That means you want it bad enough.”

She’s joined the celebrations on the other side of the room before Emily can even consider forming a response to that. As Kelley busts out a dance move with Kling, she catches Emily’s gaze, just for a second. Emily nods, and Kelley’s smile lights up.

Later, after she’s participated half-heartedly in the team’s revelry for the night, Emily finds a pad of hotel branded paper in the night table in her room. Digging out a pen as well, she thinks back to what Kelley said to her earlier.

“Don’t take no for an answer,” she scribbles on the pad. She rips off the top page, but places it down again on the pad to continue writing. “Don’t ever let anyone think you don’t want it bad enough.”

She folds up the paper, tucking it into the side pocket of her suitcase. Then, she takes out her phone and quickly taps out a text.

 **Emily:** Thanks for the pep talk. I needed that.  
**Kelley:** Don’t thank me. We all need that reminder sometimes.

She’s asleep by the time the next message comes through, but she’ll smile as she reads it, half asleep, in the morning.

 **Kelley:** Besides… Not that you’re not cute when you’re pouting, but I’d rather see you smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY honestly I don't like this chapter that much which is why it took me 2.5 months to actually finish and publish it (oops). Thank you for not giving up on me! 
> 
> Basically, I'm working toward a specific date in the timeline of this story (any guesses? just kidding) and in order to get there, time needs to pass. So this is the 3000+ word equivalent of the musical montage they stick in a movie when they need to blow through three months where nothing is happening. 
> 
> The next chapter will (hopefully) not take over two months to finish, (hopefully) be more interesting than this one, and (hopefully) have some more focus on Kelley and Emily's relationship. It takes place early in the summer, if that gives you a hint as to what it might be about....
> 
> As always, tell me you love me even when I'm being slow at sonnettscoredtheequalizer.tumblr.com <3

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what motivated me to write this. I think I want to keep going with it, but I honestly have only a vague idea where it's going so join me if you'd like, we'll take this journey together :)
> 
> Let me know what you think! xo


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